The Shyness – Sharon Olds

Then, when we were joined, I became
completed, joyful, shyer. 
I may have shone more, reflected
more, and from deep inside there rose
some glow passing steadily through me, but I was not
small, in a raftered church, or in
playing, now, I felt like someone
a cathedral, the vaulted spaces of the body
like a sacred woods.  I was quiet when my throat was not
making those iron, orbital, earth,
rusted, noises at the hinge of matter and
whatever is not matter.  He takes me
into the endings like another world at the
center of this one, and then, if he begins to
end when I am resting and I do not rejoin him yet
then I feel awe, I almost feel
fear, sometimes for a moment I feel
I should not move, or make a sound, as
if he is alone, now,
howling in the wilderness,
and yet I know we are in this place
together.  I thought, now is the moment
I could become more loving, and my hands moved shyly
over him, secret as heaven
and my mouth spoke, and in my beloved’s
voice, by the bones of my head, the fields
groaned, and then I joined him again,
not shy, not bold, released, entering
the true home, where the trees bend down along the
ground and yet stand, then we lay together
panting as if saved from some disaster, and for ceaseless
instants, it came to pass what I have
heard about, it came to me
that I did not know I was separate
from this man, I did not know I was lonely.