Benjamin’s Ivy

This is ivy’s job of course: to conceal the exterior
with foliage, to leave nothing exposed,
as I’ve explained so many times to my Benjamin
who’s forever on his ladder, viciously efficient
with the electric saw, mistrustful of the gardener,
always one step ahead of the ivy and ready
to cut it dead, because it knows how to proliferate
with abandon, how to vivify this deadpan mansion
where Benjamin is forever shutting down the furnace,
turning off the lights and locking the doors
as if ivy might insinuate itself in the night
and staunch my nakedness with leaves as I shiver
in the ancestral four-poster, where the lovely,
muscular Benjamin, hot and cotton in his Calvin Kleins,
my Benjamin, who doesn’t know the meaning
of kisses after all, has sealed the windows shut.