Long married companions, bodies altered by the slow rivers of years,
flesh softened, hair silvered, eyes deepened with unseen storms.
He sits content in the quiet grass of doing little,
she surges forever onward, busy with the world’s endless motions,
Going, doing, planning the paths of children and children’s children.
Words between them grow sparse as winter leaves,
Yet on cards of birth and wedding oaths they inscribe “love always”.
A tender echo from younger hearts.
Intimacy, that wild shower of bodies, swallowed by the vast typhoon of days,
yields to passing smiles, to pecks upon the cheek.
She speaks to him as to a child,correcting, instructing, ever certain.
Unknowing of the wounds her certainty inflicts upon his sovereign soul.
Yet she is good, a strong mother, a tender grandmother.
That is enough, more than enough, in the great catalog of lives.
She organizes, plans, orders the family’s multitudes,
Often alone, without his voice, which she no longer seeks.
He tends the yard, the walls, the quiet labors of home.
Often alone, without her voice, a perilous independence.
Neither sings the other’s toil, neither celebrates the separate stars they have become.
Two lives, parallel yet apart, twinkling in the vast night sky of time and space,
while love lingers, unacknowledged, like roots beneath impoverished soil.
This is one outstanding write Peter. Well said and very well detailed.
Thanks for the kind comment.
This is quietly heartbreaking and beautifully observed—love and life in parallel lines.
Such good writing Peter. So often, couples won’t acknowledge the other until one day there’s one less partner to walk through life with. Death hits hard and the regret of not sharing openly the feelings that still linger underneath.
Your poem narrates characters in a story of their lives. They live through your words. This is so well done.
Thank you Thomas and Tim for your thoughtful and kind remarks.
I share most of my writing with anyone other than my wife.I wonder how much great poets of the past shared works with their partners.
🙏
Powerfully penned, Peter. Excellent write my friend. This is amazing storytelling at its finest. Appreciate you.
Damian
This is sad and the description of how things even though you are doing what you must day to day you forget that the partner must be taking care of just like everyone and everything else
This is probably the way it is for most older couples. Yet always at least parallel, not veering away. Close enough for a hand to hold, to acknowledge the other. I envy that, to have someday. Just to know I am not ever really alone. As bittersweet as it can seem, it is also a reward unto itself. That commitment to stay so near, even if it seems a bit far at times. Hearts have a way…
Wonderful write. Poignant and pin-point.