Praise the man
Who tucks you under
And lifts you up
And holds you:
Praise the breadth of his hands
And the length of his reach
And the width of his thighs.
Praise the way he considers
And ponders
Differently than you do.
Praise the stubble, and the strength
And the ease in which
He reads a map.
Praise the palm that leads
The small of your back
To bend somewhere new.
Praise the voice that rumbles and bellows
And whispers and sings
And speaks snare drum and dog.
Praise the power of his step
The great strides
The energy he rides.
Praise the sounds and the snores and
The weight of him,
The warmth and the curl in the bed.
Praise the dungeon master and designer
And the tiny statues
And the Peloton.
Praise the storyteller and the spinner,
The fire starter
And the stoker.
Praise the beard of him,
The ties of him,
The way he grills the steak.
Praise the absurdity
Of stooge and pun
And dad joke.
Praise the boy in him,
The runes and the trees
And the ill-timed loon call.
Praise the fixer
And tinkerer
And tuner.
Praise the silence of him,
The one who sees far more
Than he says.
Praise the work of him,
The airports and phone calls and
Willow pruning.
Praise him who isn’t you;
Praise him who doesn’t know the way it feels to be a woman
Who has his own way of being in the world.
Praise the man
Who loves the woman,
this foreign body full of words and hairpin turns.
Praise the man who loves her.
Praise the man
She loves.
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