By guest author, Vol Lindsey
10/14/19
When you are seventy
years old and a widow,
there is a thing that sneaks
up on your young heart.
Remember back when
we first met, and you told
me about the novel you wrote,
and your awful dead end job?
And a year later, at Fall Creek Falls
when I proposed to your deep eyes?
Or how about the time we rode
the motor for a five-day tour
down the Blue Ridge Parkway
into Asheville, and all that hail
the storm used to kick our asses?
We learned to cook food OUR way,
and what clothes made US look good.
I had so hard a time buying you a gift
because everything short of the moon
was just settling.
Those deep memories brought us
all the way to that dark night
when even though our muscles
and bones shared atoms,
our souls a single thing,
you had to leave.
Now, out on the empty horizon,
there will not be enough
time to rebuild with a new one
I might suddenly fall for.
Never is as long as forever
when you know for certain
the days are too short for a man
already fully grown to look inward
and back to when things were new
and carried all the stuff required
to pour a another foundation.