For My Husband

You sleep in the darkness, you with the back I love & the gift of sleeping through my noisy nights of poetry. I have taken other men into my thoughts since I met you. I have loved parts of them. But only you sleep on through the darkness like a mountain where my house is planted, like a rock on which my temple stands, like a great dictionary holding every word- even some I have never spoken. You breathe. The pages of your dreams are riffled by the winds of my writing. The pillow creases your cheek as I cover pages. Element in which I swim or fly, silent muse, backbone, companion- it is unfashionable to confess to marriage- yet I feel no bondage in this air we share.