When your body becomes an antique,
of a rosewood or ivory-bent form that
I can hardly remember,
Since my eyes once knew the fine, now
obsolete art of carving wedges of
sense and meaning into every willing space,
Well-meaning and cautiously apologetic,
and my thumbs must have stirred the
Gypsum-like surface carefully,
with the precision of a Steinway
carrying its gold-layered music carelessly
Into some closed-eyed
July afternoon
Will you still let me say
the language of that laughing body matters
and was the greatest matter
My frail hands could ever work with