For Nancy, on Valentine’s Day
Sometimes I see
old couples in winter
who’ve been together for awhile, say,
more than ten but less than fifty
years.
Lovers who’ve
been together and are still in love
but
in ways they never imagined
in
that first full blush of spring a lifetime ago.
There is a
tender, vulnerable quality
in the way they touch and talk and
laugh together.
The smiles on
their faces almost mask
the
necessary pain around their eyes,
stigmata
of a life lived full and well,
drunk
deeply to the dregs.
You get a sense they’ve
been together
for
long enough now,
that
she knows that he knows that she knows …
And like a couple of old jazz musicians
who’ve played together for so long,
they no longer know where one ends and
the other begins,
or two dancers
who know
each
other’s favorite moves so well,
or maybe two old
cypress trees
on
the side of a wind-swept cliff,
bent
but not broken by rain and wind,
they cling to
each other,
roots and branches intertwined,
and seem to hang on for dear life or
maybe
just because it’s so much fun to wait
together
for whatever storm or treasure
the
ocean will blow in next.
They can’t imagine
doing this with anyone else.
I’d like to be
like that with you.
jpr (2/14/03)
