In the Middle of Life

Breasts silken as at twenty:
the body flirts with time,
fulfilled in its survival of
absence, unanswered need.
Man's prime but woman's fall?
I can abjure that if I choose,
pluck real images of self,
undream the poisoned dream.
In the void that follows grief,
in the trammels of desire,
I plant seeds deep in a desert.
Wordlessness claims me
as, once, I claimed words.