In 1989 I learned the rule:
men are obliged to move heavy objects for women;
until then, when one insisted, I would let them
but the imposition weighed.

My brother Jim told me last year,
"Heck, every guy knows it, it's a rule,
you gotta move heavy stuff for women,
just like you gotta change their flats."

At age forty I
am finally clued in,
well well well.

Summer of 1970,
Ron the cute blond
with john lennon glasses
worked at the graduate studies office with me:
Bill my husband of 2 years
was gone for the summer,
him on the coast me hinterland.

"This too will pass," my mother wrote,
to the teary letters I wrote home,
for married life did not go well.

The summer being hot, I bought an air conditioner, used,
Bill not being around to object to the falseness of cool air.
"What a pain in the ass to haul
a heavy ac unit from car to apartment",
I bitched at work the day I bought it;
& how was I a mechie spaz to properly install it?

Up spoke Ron the blond, "I'll help you Rae",
(those cute john lennon glasses,
though I was not then nor now a lennon fan)

"How nice of him to offer", this I thought,
and come that saturday came Ron, lugging
the modest, low numbered btu cool air machine,
fitting it snug in my window, "what a good fit,"
I thought, "how do guys know how to fit it in just so?"

Soon the unit spanned the window,
and Ron stepped his presence,
tall as my brother Jim,
into the space of closeness 'round me
occupied hitherto by absent Bill, stepped Ron.

This in the year that steven stills sang
if you can't be with the one you love,
love the one you're with.

Before I could take in the strangeness of the move,
he kissed me on lips unkissed by any but Bill
for all the time of my neonate adulthood;
in the blast of AC his lips pressed warm, and very full;
a kiss of some assurance.

Ron moved closer, but I broke away,
fluster muttered something foolish, stepping back.
I'm married, I'm not into this
(in those loose steven stills days being married
does not half suffice for no)
he backs off quick & soon departs
maintaining friendly tones.

On monday next at work
he ambled amiable as usual, cute blond Ron with
(oh) those bolshevik wire-rim glasses,
asking how was it working out, conditioned air that is.
He never treated me differently than my brother Jim,
who (who can know?) might once have kissed a married girl.

This morning, after years, I thought of Ron,
hippie boy he sauntered hair & glasses
out of the pleasant cells of my recent non-remembering,
standing inside my space again like some tall apparition.

Shall I teach my sons? - hit on girls at your leisure,
but don't press on past no, & don't take it personal;
Sweet justice is a boy who acts on "No,"
then treats you like the question was never raised.
Respect is sudden warmth posed in air-conditioned cool,
posed & answered, accepted & posed no more.