And one came after rage
when, while I was changing him, the first kid
upped and pissed in my eye: you drumming
the pillow and gasping for air, “Step aside, Pa.”

The out-of-nowhere belly laughs,
vast, deep, canonical,
unstoppered, ’til you, weeping, touch
the sorrow string—we’re wrestling
over the garden hose, you watering
my trumpet vine, commanding it
to grow—the nucleic force, laughter,
of coupling and coupleness.
Because isn’t each couple a kind
of hell, sex and flesh its marvels, its flame?

                                   And one in Italy,
under a schmaltz-laden, honey-lit moon,
started: if we were Dante, whom we’d consign,
in what tortured pairings, to pouches and pits.
A laugh so stunning—containing the glimmer
that all we imagine is us—so glorious,
thirty-five years later we went back, spent
a pile of euros just to see
was it still there.

                                   And while the hose
was running, you let me have a drink
and I washed my muddy hands.