Betrayal

When you stumble across your lover and your friend

naked in or on your bed

there are things that might be said.

Goodbye is not one of them.

You’ll never close that clumsily opened door,

they’ll be stuck in that room forever.

But did they have to be so naked?

So minus grace?

Floundering around as if in a spring puddle?

The legs too spindly, the waists too thick,

the flubbers here and there,

the tufts of hair . . .

Yes, it was a betrayal,

but not of you.

Only of some idea you’d had

of them, soft-lit and mystic,

with snowfall sifting down

and a mauve December sunset—

not this gauche flash,

this flesh akimbo,

caught in the glare of your stare.