Love Is....

He never ceases to amaze you, for
within the first few soft chords of a
fifty-year-old song he knows the title
and whispers it in your ear and as you
stand by the counter preparing dinner
circles your waist, turns you around
and you begin dancing while you recall
every word of that song you hum in
perfect synchrony as you spin around
the kitchen floor your two little dogs
in arrested motion their black eyes
quizzically alert and uncertain. There
is a certain formula that exists which
might be useful to those who look at
photographs of elderly couples locked
in an ancient marriage, wondering just
what it is that keeps these dried-apple-
faced frail people together in a love
compact whose conditions are unknown
to all too many failing to acknowledge
the place of mutual respect, patience
tempered with undying gratitude for
the good fortune of stable and loving
relations from courtship to the very
end drawn snugly in a tender comforter
of warmth and caring so that later the
very notion there could be an end to all
that is familiar and loving would be to
plunge into a abyss of utter emptiness.