The way of a man with a maid,
Solomon said,
Too much for him to understand
Too much.
A snake crawling on a rock,
A ship moving across the waves
The motionless soaring of an eagle
Too much to understand.

I have come to grips with a snake's scaly progress,
undulating,
cupping,
twisting,
hugging,
movement upon a rock.

I can nearly sense a ship's purposeful meanderings
on pathless seas,
driven by compass-aimed sails
and the science of sextants and stars.

I have accepted the Bernoulli Principle:
air currents rushing under and
meandering over
curved and feathered wings
producing lift,
defying gravity.

But still I cannot grasp
the way of a man with a maid.

Though I have studied
oxytocin,
endorphins,
hormonal urges,
a man and a maid
who walk through life
past beauty and prime,
surviving the vagaries of time,
seeing in each other
their youth long spent,
still straight and tall in the other's mind,
though old and bent...
must always bring me wondering, to a stop.
Such things, the Wise One said,
Are far too wonderful for me.

Long live love.