You See

                            by Susan Stevens



		what our words are,
		after all--paroxysms
		of the hottest desire; how love
		transmutes; encoded murmurs.

		When I say I 
		love you it's not
		that clichéd stuff.
		Not anything you've
		heard before.  Not sex.
		Not fond regard. Enough
		to say that intercourse
		of the sexual kind
		would overstate our case.
		
		Although I could lie
		beside you for hours,
		quite still, or rolling over
		and over verdant knolls,
		grassy and prolix,
		your hardness unraveling
		the paradox of which I speak.
		Yes--intercourse would be
		too much.  Or not enough.