Tea

After fifty years we meet to take

a cup of tea on your seventy-fifth birthday.

Your body is still slim, lips red

and full, eyes sunken in a crush of skin.

For a moment, I remember us

nineteen and naked on an Oriental rug

in the Lexington living room—your smooth

narrow body, pale thighs pumping,

sexual damp on pubic hair, both of us

giddy and wild and frightened with desire—

and your father's hesitant voice calling

from upstairs, "Lillian? Lillian? Lillian?"

We finish our tea and embrace briefly.

Each of us knows: We are old people.

You drive me to my Marriott, holding tight

to the wheel as our eyes adjust to darkness.