Is It Stress?

                                                    Robert Ronnow
                                                      Brother Death

                        Is It Stress?

Is it stress,
or loss, despair and survival
we must discuss.
                            Stress is just the symptom
of a universe intent to destroy the individual
before it births new life. It sends the dogs
after us, after the holocaust, in the tattered ruins
of our city.
                   There is this despair and expectation
of destruction, but somewhere there is still also
simple sky blue,
flowers among railroad ties,
true love between sexual partners.

Is it sex,
or love, companionship and reliableness
we must expect.
                           Sex, only eternally laying
my head at your queynt, can interest me sometimes.
Your legs lead to a pleasure that seems infinite
and smells perfect.
                                So there is this tenderness, a
connection like a suction to the biological, ephemeral
as snow on the ground,
one elk in aspen,
death and nothing less.