New lover, known and unknown,
you’ve risen before dawn
and, delicious in suit and tie,
you lean down to the bed
to kiss my rumpled head
the tenderest goodbye.
A military bearing
adheres to what you’re wearing.
Oh, how many years
who knows he is a man
and not a boy?—who steers
himself through the long day
and rides it, come what may,
in a waft of aftershave
and the bracing, scratchy starch
of his dress shirt? As you march
off to the office, brave
and clear-eyed in your tortoise-
shell glasses, looking gorgeous,
I feel both safe and weak
slipping back to your kiss
in my sleep, and the light graze
of your cufflink on my cheek.
from The Surveyors by Mary Jo Salter (Knopf, 2017). Reprinted with permission