From Wild Love, 1996, by Nancy Wood (unpublished)
When people look at us they see
an ordinary couple edging past their prime,
not beautiful, but slack with having hoarded time.
You with your look of contentment and me
with the eyes of a woman permanently in love
are construed as complacency by most. We are called
respectable, dependable, unremarkable. And so we live
beneath a cloak of mild deception, laughing to ourselves.
No one knows that behind closed doors
you and I become young again through the magic
of desire and in our bed we make wild love
until we greet the sun. Wild love is a secret love,
the kind that ordinary couples must preserve
to keep the outside world from coming in.
