He had lost her attention
As the time together bridged
A span of competing but uneven years
And made no mention of their wear and tear,
Of their original contention and intent.
The child that came invited, much loved and as one
Who excited such invention in privilege and tokens
Said and done. The strings and threads that gently pulled
The girl who grew as people do, from state to altered state
And who when lulled and woken, revised their wry affection
Who promised to return when time was due, from school
Addressing such defection. And then was gone again
To live her life, as people do who grow and move away.
To live as one. Or more than one once more and say
Who knows? Who lives to fight another day.
That they will never see.
But now; the prospect of two adult lives
Rejoined in close convention. From three to two.
And who, when in-junctioned to review the synapses
And strands of all the memories, near collapses, half failures
Are faced with choices, the acid flavors and such truths that
The voices in their ears and eyes have shown. The tacit doubts
And sanctions. Nothing soothes the self perception
Or inaction of two frightened people, inwardly reviewing
Each to each the dessicated droughts of life alone.
To fill the vacuum. To atone. To shout. To bear again in later-years
The self-respect and mutuality that in the best of times and places
Shored up, sustained the complete totality of a life once shared.
Rediscover, reinvent within the spaces of a glacier so deep
Some magma of original notion that keeps the home fires burning.
And so to bed and the laying on of hands, the swift caress, good night.
Lips brushing hair in mild devotion. As the ocean of their solitude expands.
And in the evenings when the summer nights
Grow shorter; they watch tv and wonder if the silent peals of girlish laughter
In the listening echoes of the rooms just down the hall
Sound hollow, if not small. Had their time together then been judiciously spent
Without conditions? Without direction that presumed assent
And her right to leave, or follow her own stars? And when Suzanne
Took them down to her place by the river, they could spend the night
Forever, at the altar where it all began, and does she suspect that in the rap
Of their quick footsteps lies affection and assumptions that never,
Ever would they falter? She takes their hands and shows them where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers. The paradox of maps and rhyme
As the caravan of hours slips irrevocably southward in the race against
Their silent blocks of time. These are children in the morning,
They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever,
Unseen. The harvest is all in, the seeds are sown. The empty room confirms the errant teen
The final painful portent. And the bird has flown.