With Garbo In Palm Springs

We’re at the resort, the one with the forty-one
pools, and it’s night so if we were up in the swaying
fronds of a palm tree the ground would stretch before us
a green freckled thigh against a dark sheet. But Greta
and I are inside, perched on the edge of the bed
watching my wife sleep. She’s beautiful, we agree,
and my daughter, too, their blond hair spread against
the pillow like a silk scarf in a silent movie.
Though now Greta’s impatient with all the watching,
the kid especially, so we go outside to smoke
her cigarettes, to lean our backs against the white
adobe walls and kiss for as long as it takes.
The electronic lock clicks behind us, a set
of perfect teeth, and I’m chasing Greta across
the lawn with its lemon trees I can smell in the dark,
past the lounge chair where someone’s abandoned
the sort of wide brimmed hat meant to keep us young,
over the patio still warm as skin from the sun’s
relentless shining, toward the place where she’s already
slipped off her dress and climbed into the water,
side-stroking with one arm and holding her smoke
aloft with the other. And if I say it’s a dream,
it will have no power. And if I say it’s real,
no one will ever believe me. But can’t it
be both? I want to rub my body against her
perfect one. So I do. All my nubbly parts sanded
down against the smooth monument of her form,
ageless as the desert once was before we came here
and turned it into a golf course. Now only
my hunger—its vast, unquenchable fury—
interrupts the glow of each long leg as she traces
eggbeater circles in the blue depths beneath her.