My woman is

the heavy-thumbed milkmaid

  who kneads out the knot

in my neck each night. By rote,

  I do not have to ask her for it.

  Her gesture lives

in the punched-out

  rosette of her elbow,

the working groove

  of its opposite crook.

  Nightly, she does this,

my frantic little woman.

  She hands me a glass to suckle

the cramp, lathers white

  the day-old wound,

  her fingers

doomed by that kind of

  terminal kindness.

Whatever I do, I do not

  shake her and the blind

inertia running

right out of her knuckles.

  My woman’s hands are a soft hook.

Her face is the lit dome

  that I look up

and out through.