Lilac Time

The old couple gazed out of their window.
Five grandchildren playing in the garden.
So noisy so happy so much
what they should be.
He slipped his arm about her waist
And whispered
do you remember the lilacs
So long ago so far away.
We were young and in love

I did not know I was happy back then.
Each day more chores to do
never enough money.
All our children like steps and stairs
the youngest newer than the springtime.

She nodded fondly
a mist covering her memory
It was their time a time of lilacs.

It was so long ago
when we sat on the old porch.
sipping hot coffee
in the early quiet spring  morning.

Our children still asleep in their beds.
On the table next to the coffee ***
a rolled newspaper full of war
and drama of the day, lay untouched.

I remember looking up at you then
Your beautiful hair
flowing in the morning breeze.
I saw you then my love
at that moment not as my wife
or mother to my children,
but as the woman
I could never get enough of
when we first met.

I thought how good your hair would feel
falling onto my bare chest in our bed.
If only I could have frozen that moment in time
put that feeling into a bottle
like a captured insect.

To open and breathe its fragrance,
again and again
through the fast passing years
To last me forever.

If you would have asked of me back  then,
my love are you happy?

There on the old porch with lilac’s
growing up its broken trellis
in wild  springtime abundance.
Beside the fragrant pathways
of a far off spring

I would have answered
yes my love.
Very happy,
so very happy.