Sex in Inclement Weather

Climbing the last broken vertebra
Of this mountain range, I look down
On the cottage we had taken for
The weekend of passion, not hiking.
You thought it strange that I’d turned away
From your crinkled nightgown, silken
Underwear, pouting suffrage of
The life we had promised ourselves.
Why had I chosen to walk up here
Among the owls and the badgers
When your loving vulva was there
For the taking, my dear wife of then?
What had the owls to womanly virtues,
Why the badger over the thrust of sex?
You could not know, as I did not know,
Then, unlike now, about my mission
To love nature as though my mistress
And to you I brought only distress
And tales of the badgers and owls.

Grayson Ellis (c) 1979
From ‘Badgers and Owls’