‘The enemy’
people say,
meaning Time.
Enemy indeed he tends to seem:
longed-for hours, almost as soon
as entered, gone;
yet drags his feet
down grey boredoms, the grim wait;
always his mocking game
stacked against us.
But no, not always.
These two days,
two nights, when our
long affection opened its cactus-flower,
we noticed Time
choosing to walk with us
at our shared natural pace,
and so shared joy is a shared peace,
a home.
It had to end
but, lived fully, still is.
Time, this time,
shows himself a friend.
Larks with difficulty into the wild wind
wing, singing against it as they lift
and their trilling is mostly scattered, lost in
defeating gusts, but comes in bright bursts as if
to remind me that your voice from the far distance
is calling me always, and that mine can call
(bursts of song) back to you, and that all
these gales, miles, months cannot defeat love’s existence.