Loons

Propped up on your elbow at the foot
of the bed — animal, inward, bare —
you make me want to shield my body.
Between us there is a covenant:
though I'm stronger than you, I do
what you want. A chemical, stimulating
the thinnest wires of your brain, makes me
as desirable to you as you are to me.
Still, everything feels fractured and bruised.
A globe of fog encompasses the bed,
like night water, on which loons — drifting separately,
mated for life — wail to one other,
their strange, larval nakedness something good,
instead of a kind of helplessness.