Wondering
I’ve been wondering
After listening to women talk
About desires and love,
Why such a push for sex?
Alicia said she needed it,
Or her sense of identity suffered,
And when she split with Michael
It hit her badly.
Rachel explained
She wants sex so much
That if she has no regular partner
She has some “fuck buddies”
She can phone
For a noncommittal shag.
I remember when I first visited
She pulled me into the house,
Closed the door,
And we were on the floor.
Sandra thought perhaps
There is confusion
Over need for love.
She gets love with open legs.
But I sense there’s more to it than that.
Mary has an ocean
Of warmth and connection
Flowing out of her
As sexual pleasure.
But Sue has met
Troubles with her men that way;
Hassles, pain, disturbance,
Followed in the wake of romance.
Yet she presses on,
Supporting her child alone,
Still hoping to be loved,
And perhaps there is the key —
Unmet longings,
Needs never fulfilled,
Parts of us pressing
To grow and flower
With so much to give,
So much to receive —
And who will be our
Partner in it?
To become.
To reproduce.
To know oneself.
To find a helpmate and support.
They are all involved.
Perhaps we need so many people.
Someone to want us specially
And recognise who we are.
A delightful sexual partner;
Then we need a practical
Down-to-earth problem solver;
And of course,
Someone to stimulate our mind,
Our creativity and growth.
Oh yes, the friend we can
Tell everything to,
Without their judgment or pressure.
And I?
Well, I hear and witness these things.
There are so many ways
Of seeing people.
David said to me
That his lover
Told him he must be impotent
Because his manhood would not rise.
And he watched her
Applying vaginal lubricant
Because she produced none
Of her own.
And he thought
There are two of us here
Who are impotent,
But only one admitting it.
So is it all a crazy fit,
An excess of our hormones
That we get shaken by?
Or perhaps a flowering love
That promises so much,
But in so many of us,
Has only put a tip above
The surface of our life,
The glory of which
Fails to emerge.
So I walk by the lake shore,
Watching the swimmers,
Without much urge to
Be immersed myself.
More needy of warm companionship.
Your body near me,
Than to be in the
Waves and currents of sex.
But I am an old man,
And life gets easier
And hormones less.
Copyright ©2005 Tony Crisp