Milk
They are enormous, in this photograph,
with your daughter, fifteen years ago.
I can hardly recognise them.
I mean no disrespect to the softnesses
you press against me each morning
when I say I wish I could have known them there, then,
in all their sweet fullness.
She would have had to fight me for them.
I would have squeezed them to my face,
expressing them, one in each hand,
until their juice ran down over my chin.
I love that word: expressing.
It's an expression too profound for words,
a glossolalia of physicality,
your body's essence nurturing, nourishing, sustaining, loving,
literally, speaking in tongues
- and I wish it were my tongue!
They are an eloquence
beyond alphabets,
just the mmm-mmm-omm of the first mammalian syllables of speech,
the hungry mouth engulfing, swallowing,
the babylips caressing, enticing, insisting,
to bring you forth,
teethless gums biting
as later, my toothed mouth shall bite,
my fingers enjoying the orgasmic reflex at your groin.
Well,
that was, could have been, then,
when I knew you only
in the same mindless yearning your daughter felt
as she groped for your breast,
not knowing whose, nor caring.
But she found it, and you,
as do I each day.
Counting my blessings.
February 13, 2001
