How to explain to a new lover half a lifetime
Walking hand-in-hand down sidewalks
Graying hair lit by streetlamps,
Yet tingly as children again,
A salve to the many scars
Of all those come and gone,
Scared to tears between
Lest this end the same;
Or in the shyness of first nakedness
Weathered so by experience
Into a perfect alignment of flaws.
Hopes and dreams once felled
Grow again from these moments,
Bound in shame no more.
Out of year by year of stillness
A certainty of passion explodes
And in the before and after
Leave days to be much more,
A place to fall in love with minds
To fill valleys with story-time laughter
And pits of stomachs with a soft brow,
To share the wisdom of failure.
Here the building of a lasting truth,
A deep breath of forever after,
Only possible in the facing of otherwise
That comes from bodies wearing down.
Time will till the rocks that lie deep:
Disappointment, distrust, pain, and sorrow,
Never without a knowing embrace,
Down to where darkest secrets wait
For the sunshine of understanding eyes
That watch newness fall away
Into the unfolding of half a lifetime.