Finding myself away from you,
I wonder now
How we survived
Pre-cell phone,
Pre-Internet
Pre-instant
Everything.

Then I remember
Poets of the past
Whose lovers waited
Months,
Or even years....

Napoleon's letter to his Joséphine de Beauharnais,
Having been away on campaign for months,
"Coming home in three days...."
(And then his coded lover's words.)

Or Donne's "Valediction Forbidding Mourning,"
Reminding her of love's elasticity, fine as beaten gold,
Before he left his wife to journey far;

Or Ezra Pound's translation of the letter
From the Chinese merchant's wife
Whose love had driven her to journey
As far as Cho Fu Sa....

I realize the softness of my day,
The way 21st Century love hangs
Eternal or ephemeral,
Electrically upon the ethereal air...

Commit myself again to you.
Thirty-two years is
A long time and a short time
In the scope of centuries of lovers,
An eternity of generations who remember
Better loves in spite of harder lives.

My love is all for you.