I Think of Bess

Each time I find myself
completely taken up in
a woman (and it happens
often), when I wake
to see one face in
my mind's eye, when
I stop to discover
I'm overtaken with
a certain kind of
passion I've known
since adolescence,
my dear, long-lost, first
"serious love" Bess
is there in the room
with me. And I trip over
myself wanting the same
things I wanted back then,
to be more like
John Donne, barely
to contain the verve of
Shakespeare within my
puny frame, somehow
to channel Orpheus.
I come back to my senses
and realize I'm much
too old now for any
of that, too set in
my ways, too trampled
by the vagaries of time.
How could a person be
like John Donne when
he no longer believes in
the power of love?
He couldn't.
I can't. But I still
think of Bess.

(2008)