Sharon Olds, the author of the poem is telling herself, and at the same time is making us aware of the fact that in this world the bodily pleasure is more important than the true feelings and real emotions. She presents the alleged lovers in an aura-like story as they are compared with two dancers or ice skaters, and this analogy is making us believe that they are having an idyllic romance in which everything ends beautiful and natural since both ice skaters and dancers represent the ideal of beauty and youth and off course the partners show each other total confidence and altruism when they are together. On the other hand, this initial graceful comparison is expelled in the next verse in which the poetess describes us the partners in their intimacy and also the way they commute (“faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth” (Olds, 1985)).
The fact that two persons join only their bodies and not the soul is making the author think at God. This bodily union is showing us that the partners choose to live like that repeatedly (“How do they come to the come to the come to God come to the still waters and not love” (Olds, 1985)).Trough this type of relationship they are putting a barrier between the physical and psychological needs, imposing themselves not to fall in the trap of love as that way things would be simpler, uncomplicated. In this manner they have created a personal religion and adopted a new life style (“These are the true religious, the purists, the pros, the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of God” (Olds, 1985)).
The poem is a testimony of the past but also of our days in which people return to primary needs to fill their elementary desires but also to grow their self - confidence. This continuous search of adventure, of a new partnership is showing us that we are all born with a powerful sense of independence from birth until death as the author implies in her verse: “children at birth whose mother are going to give them away” (Olds, 1985).
The comparison she makes with the runner and the running road allows us to consider that the running track is our entire life in which we find obstacles and difficulties (the cold, the wind) filled with dangers if we decide to run on our own. The author of the poem describes this fact as a normal behavior for many of us but still we cannot realize if she approves it or not or if she is just tolerant with occasional sex.
In my opinion the poem brings us to reality, to normality because nowadays the relationships are consumed very fast and every person has the right to choose, and if sex without love is the answer for many persons this means that they know very well what they are doing. The partners give themselves to each other during the act, but once the act ends they go on with heir own lives without regrets or guilty feelings. They choose to do that from selfish reasons, maybe hazardous and who knows possibly even life itself determines them to embrace this kind of life. At the same time it is a lesson of life from which we must extract the conclusion that at some point we all must give ourselves entirely (with all that we are and posses) to one single person whom to love and cherish because only when we are in love we become better, happier, smarter, stronger and can approach God.
References
Olds, S. (1985) Sex without love. “The Riverside Anthology of Literature”. Mason, Cengage Learning.
