Don’t overdo sweetheart
You slip so easily into self-sacrifice
Those bushes needed trimming
Architectural features want replacing or repair

The nimbus-shaped arcade visible through the corrective lens
Fair ground to spend and lose the gray lion
You tell me you are an adult
You do what you want

Such ruthless determination let there be no misunderstanding
Such invincible will to truth within the compassed skeptical range
When all the soldiers have succumbed to the bivouac
All the climbers resurrected to base camp

But not so you my beloved
Who are so full of feeling and so tough
You will persevere in love for a rickety cricket
Who falls short and occasionally packs it in

Not conflict despite the images of contention
We have established a rhythm of porcelain forgiveness
The Sèvres trophy in the straw-plumped manger of decorous lives
The commemorative aftershock

Heroic exaltation dying into wakefulness
An unsteady equilibrium call it companionship transpires
Rubicon Acheron the wide St Johns
Crossings routine complex or disquieting