In the Middle

When Mitch's mother caught us fondling each other,
She was most assuredly angry, saying
We were doing wrong, that if we didn't stop
We'd end up funny and what kind of life would that be.

We'd been getting careless. She certainly scared us.
I feared she'd tell my family what she'd seen,
But I was relieved to know Mitch and I were not yet funny
Which is probably why we became even more

Daring with each other, no longer courting
Uncertainty, touching each other
Wherever we wanted, then when, one body familiar
As the other. We still had lots of time.

Forrest Hamer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a practicing psychologist in Oakland, CA. Call & Response (1995) is his first collection of poems.

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