Septuagenarian Abecedarian Love Song

All I didn’t know I wanted—was to
be alive on a late, slow Sunday,

call you to join me from the other room. You, whom I spend my
day-after-days with. Both of us still more or less

eager for the afternoon to un-
fold. Look at what we’ve got, having lost what we once thought was our

grip. If one of us hears music, the other
hums along, finds a harmony—

in tune, mostly, then bending a note to
jazz it up. Still, I wouldn’t dream of

knocking it—how ridiculous and raucous, how unlikely
love is—our voices like morning birds, moving from

murmur to chatter to outright song. I can
no longer deny the strangeness in the shape

of an hour, or how the hard
power of what we once thought

quietly turned itself into something
resonant and continuous.

Superimpose over all of this a photo of our younger selves—
tight smiles and a greedy earnestness that nearly

undid us— not to mention the relentless
vanity of presuming to be in the right place at the

wrong time. Now take an
X-ray of this day— who we are glows

yellow as sunlight bent by amber glass. See how it bounces and
zig-zags through us—like minutes, like years.

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