A Poem for Thursday

Dove Tells Women to Love Their Armpits

                                             Headline in The New York Times

Thank your for drifting down to us,

for giving us the clarity of your cleanliness,

O dove with a message for human women.

Thank you for feathering off their arms

and their legs, for nipping crumbs from

their after-dinner laps and not revealing

the source of your tiny nourishments.

Sweet dove, nestle in the concavities

of all women, be our proctor, gamble

with our view of ourselves as we step out

of the shower’s flight of steam, its flock

of hidden stubble and a razor’s edge.

O dove, women will thank you for ages

to come, possibly, for your sanitary cooing,

for your permission to love that which

we think may be unlovable to one species

or another. Women will build monuments

to your advertorial permission: to love

what we are told must be hidden by flesh

but what is yet filled with old nourishment

when someone brings it a tickle with the tongue.