A SEX THERAPIST DISCUSSES HER DAY

By Stephen Chappell

Friends think it must be fun:

transgressive, exciting,

my consulting room full

of unleashed erotics.

In fact it’s terminally dull,

the people I see sad, frightened.

Men too hard to be touched.   Women

wanting babies but hating being up for it.

They want me to unscrew them,

resolve their “issues”, turn the desperate wittering

of their wasted lives painlessly into fecund joy.

I gaze out my window.

There is a pear tree full of the juiciest of fruit.

That’s where I want to be, fully clothed,

under its branches, listening to the pluck and stroke

of a string quartet, booming with deep cello notes.

Not parsing another confession,

nodding through a relationship’s slow collapse.

I want the hush of bowed strings, wind in the leaves,

wasp-drunk sweetness of fallen fruit.

No one asking me what life means.

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