hoping they’d have enough time
for the life they imagined, waking together,
cups of coffee, days of work, supper and dishes.
They had a machine that could do it all, but he liked to wash,
so she dried with a view to the crabapple out back
and the honeysuckle bloom that followed.
They lived in the house he’d grown used to
without changing a thing but the kitchen curtains.
She’d had her disappointments and still the faith of a mountain,
insurance, he suspected, against the kind of despair
that hollows out a person. He saw himself
more as meadow soaking up whatever was there.
Light shone from the back of her eyes.
He had a broad, deep laugh
that could hold anyone in its bowl of sound.
They didn’t speak of the inevitable.
Were amazed by the fire that burned in their bodies.
Had you seen their hands swinging
together down the street at dusk you’d swear
they were children walking this earth.