Perceptions, then and now
Once, I imagined in the smiles of passersby
an acknowledgment of our mutual devotion,
as if it burned so brightly as not to be missed.
I saw us in the exuberance of the couple
who paused to kiss in the pale yellow lamplight
of a glittering new footbridge.
Our passion, like theirs, cut joyfully
through the harbor's dampening fog.
I easily transposed us onto the forms
of the pair who embraced as they passed through
a college parking lot, as if unable
to take too many steps, without reconnecting.
I saw us ten years hence in the quiet
joyful confidence of a couple long partnered,
still loving.
What a difference a moment makes
in the midst of so many hundreds of moments
before.
an acknowledgment of our mutual devotion,
as if it burned so brightly as not to be missed.
I saw us in the exuberance of the couple
who paused to kiss in the pale yellow lamplight
of a glittering new footbridge.
Our passion, like theirs, cut joyfully
through the harbor's dampening fog.
I easily transposed us onto the forms
of the pair who embraced as they passed through
a college parking lot, as if unable
to take too many steps, without reconnecting.
I saw us ten years hence in the quiet
joyful confidence of a couple long partnered,
still loving.
What a difference a moment makes
in the midst of so many hundreds of moments
before.
posted by Judy at 7:40 AM
2 Comments:
Sad - I feel. Quiet.
This is unexpectedly beautiful. Each image is simple, yet gleaming, in the way poetry does, and life, often, does not. It is unexpected, not because I do not expect beauty from you, the writer, but because it purports itself to be such a small, quiet nothing. And then it is so much more.
And you have to read it twice.
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