Not less, not more.
So as I fetch the post
And look across at Sonny’s house,
His pregnant wife,
How goes it with their married life
Behind the windows private, closed?
How is my neighbor Ralph, his fru*–
Their love life – life when day is through?
I’m not perverse or curious –
Quite the reverse, I’m pure, lust’s seed
All gone. My love life carries on,
Affection at the base,
But struck by what’s behind the lace,
The permutations, variations on a theme,
The sex a symbol of a dream.
Behind the windows are my friends,
Committed to their common ends.
The daily twos I meet
When we have something nice to eat,
Trade visits, pleasant talk.
Behind the window do they balk
At tender touching, joke-filled groping?
Has the sex fulfilled the hoping?
Do the hopes go hand-in-hand
With the candled mealtimes?
One never sees the times back of the blinds.
That why a blind is called a blind:
The outside never sees behind,
Never knows the couple’s minds –
I speculate on ghosts and costs,
And springs and frosts,
And wonder, as I fetch the post and look across,
What loves are won and what is lost?
Arlene Corwin Poetry 