Before the world expands

I want to say it’s been swell knowing you, 
even as you grow toward the grave, 
hurt hours when your confinement will set free
that body from its berth within the womb. 
After the children are over, and they deliver 
our life to us, to squander or to save, 
spent, like a year of work for physicians’ fees, 
no longer being patient, we’ll be lovers. 
That’s not to say I’ll swear off love for now 
and, yoked with you, for thirty years play slave
to cash and kids and candy, or that I’ll flee 
and leave you in the sweatyard playing cow; 
rather, we’ll dive together to the sea 
and flounder along a reef in search of cave.