The title promises a scandal, and the poem answers with a joke at the reader's expense. "Threesome" sets us up for something racy, but the three turn out to be "my wife, a bottle and I," a trio that is domestic, tipsy and oddly tender. The poem is a thanksgiving, and its central idea is that real intimacy includes the unglamorous parts of life. Love, for this speaker, isn't separate from the smell of breath and the habit of sharing a drink. It is partly made of them.
The first two lines sound like the start of a prayer. "I give thanks for love / and lasting kindness" uses the old, formal language of grace before a meal, and it is built from calm abstractions. Each line runs to about five syllables, so the opening moves at a slow, even pace, like a person bowing their head. The word "lasting" is worth noticing. Judging by the text, the marriage has some years behind it, and the speaker values "kindness," a quieter and more durable thing than passion, alongside love.
Then the third line drops the solemnity. "And how much we drink and stink" is longer than anything before it, and every word in it has a single syllable, so the line thuds along. "Drink" and "stink" rhyme, a cheap, comic, nursery-rhyme pairing that would be out of place in a solemn hymn. Listen further back, though, and "thanks" shares the same hard "-nk" sound. Gratitude and stink are tied together by the ear before the poem ever says they belong together. The phrase "how much" also matters. The speaker doesn't apologize for the drinking or the smell. He counts them among the things he is thankful for, and the shared "we" makes them a joint project, something the couple does together.
The shortest line, "mouth to mouth," is the poem's pivot, and it works on at least three levels. It can describe a kiss. It can describe a bottle passed back and forth, each mouth taking its turn at the same glass opening. A reader might also hear "mouth-to-mouth" as the language of resuscitation, breath given from one body to another to keep it alive. The poem never insists on that last reading, but the phrase is there, and it adds a quiet seriousness to a line that is otherwise about smelly breath. At three syllables it is also a pause, a held breath between the confession of line three and the punchline of line five.
That final line, "my wife, a bottle and I," finishes the joke and also deepens it. The bottle is listed as a person, wedged between husband and wife as a full member of the party. Its position in the list is funny, but it is also faintly unsettling, since a bottle sitting between two spouses could suggest a third presence in the marriage. The poem declines to moralize about this, and the tone stays affectionate throughout. The grammar adds a last touch of comedy. Saying "and I" rather than "and me" is the correct form of the pronoun, and its prim politeness sounds almost absurd after "stink." The speaker puts himself last in the list, and the poem closes on the single letter "I," which works as a small gesture of modesty.
The poem is significant because it manages a lot in five lines. It has no regular meter and only one true rhyme, yet it is carefully shaped, with lines that swell from five syllables to seven and then shrink to three. It borrows the dignity of a prayer and then lets the body in. Many love poems flatter their subjects, and this one celebrates a marriage by admitting its faults, its drinking and its smells. The humor makes the gratitude believable. A thanksgiving that includes the stink feels more honest than one that doesn't, and it suggests that being loved over time means being known at your least presentable, and being kissed anyway.