Forever Loving

There was a time when chivalrous 
knights proclaimed their love 
wearing their ladies' colourful scarves 
redolent of their beloved's scent, 
over the cold, hard steel of their battle
geared armour. The more temperate 
armed themselves with that emotional 
wealth of love by inscribing their
beloved's name deep within their 
beating hearts, to last as long as their 
hearts might. Some loving statements 
scratched a comely lass's name on 
granite boulders, to last as long as 
climate and weather permitted, truly 
a love making its name to posterity's 
legend. Lovers' names pencil-scribbled
or pen-knife-incised on park benches 
and the bark of handy trees made the 
effort to last, at least as long as love's 
whimsy. But we live now in a fleeting
age where newness lasts a heartbeat 
before it stales. And so, too, it seems 
with love, I mused, arrested by the large
neat letters writ on a smooth, new
snowfall. Meant to last the blink
of a restless eye, so discreetly
to vanish in the warming sun. A 
paean to 21st Century inconstancy.