You can tell by how he lists

                                             to let her

kiss him, that the getting, as he gets it,

is good.

              It’s good in the sweetly salty,

deeply thirsty way that a sea-fogged

rain is good after a summer-long bout

of inland drought.

                              And you know it

when you see it, don’t you? How it

drenches what’s dry, how the having

of it quenches.

                         There is a grassy inlet

where your ocean meets your land, a slip

that needs a certain kind of vessel,

                                                        and

when that shapely skiff skims in at last,

trimmed bright, mast lightly flagging

left and right,

                      then the long, lush reeds

of your longing part, and soft against

the hull of that bent wood almost im-

perceptibly brushes a luscious hush

the heart heeds helplessly—

                                                the hush

of the very good.