My wife would tell me and I would say "Ok" in the same way I might tell the bug man he's free to come on Tuesday, or respond to my daughter's request to play a different song

It has meant, only, that there will be a break in certain intimacies and that, while I may see her naked, we will be constrained

A small price to pay for life, and nothing to be done about it, anyway

But now, after dense years made softer by the erosions that loss, like rain, brings—
Not only flowers but rivulets and streams—
I have learned to sit straighter and to see the shape of things

So now it means that the entire world is bleeding, and God
Still dripping wet with cold, is stripped, a spear in his side

And God's womb, too, is ripped open, with all things, in communion

All bleeding, and

We are free to bleed, too,
And hold each other's hand and nod
Partaking in the life that only death can bring
Like trees waiting for leaves
Like field mouse waiting
For the bright, kind spring

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