Sunday Poem

SEX NEXT DOOR

It's rare, slow as a creaking of oars,
and she is so frail and short of breath
on the street, the stairs -- tiny, Lilliputian,
one wonders how they do it.
So, wakened by the shiftings of their bed nudging
our shared wall as a boat rubs its pilings,
I want it to continue, before here awful
hollow coughing fit begins. And when
they have to stop (always), until it passes, let
us praise the resumed rhythm, no more than a twitch
really, of our common floorboards. And how
he's waited for her before pushing off
in their rusted vessel, bailing when they have to,
but moving out anyway, across the black water.

From The New Canon: An Anthology of Canadian Poetry (2005) by Julie Bruck.