Poem Written in 2011 (19 years into marriage)

I forget how delicate you are
fooled again
I see only the warrior, the bull,
the brawn, the bluster
muscles, rippling
sinews taught
jets of steaming breath
issuing from within.
 
Then I remember
the silk moths.
 
Remember when you brought home from the weaving village
the half a dozen wide
round trays
woven circles of smoke-dark bamboo
scores of fat little lozenges of living silk
Cocoons spiraling between low walls to keep the worms
from tangling together as they spun their snug homes?
 
We watched for weeks the creamy soft coffins
fat and shiny with life, until we
saw them crack, open all at once
black eyes in strange small white heads,
looking lidless into the light
feathery furred wings pushing out, straining to be free,
then the cloud of them fluttering up,
flickering in the sunshine above.
 
In their dance of delight and desire
they coupled quickly
Bodies touching briefly then,
wild fluttering slowed,
came quiet back to earth
wing beats soft like panting,
like trying to catch their breath
after so much life
until they stopped
lay still,
and there
bodies that had moments before held such fiery life,
didn’t simply die, but  
crumbled
fell away like dust,
leaving nothing but
hundreds of tiny eggs,
mounds of wet seeds
purple glistening, progeny.
 
You and I are
No less
No more
 
and I am
sorry
that I so often
forget.