12-30-2013, 01:39 AM
We are awkward with one another;
thirty years and yet we sit in silence,
improvisation never as easy as it seems.
Marriage a movement of love and of loss
played in equal measure.
Our shared turns of tragedy,
of sadness and rigid regrets
separate yet bind us, yoked as we are
to this life, and to each other
in deceptive cadence.
I rise to gather plates.
The geese are out this morning,
their hoarse honking, tenor tubas
in the marching band. They waddle
clockwise around the lake like so much brass,
wearing matching epaulets.
Suddenly, as if at sharp rap
of an absent conductor’s baton,
lifting their wings as one
they rise up,
flying in perfect formation.
thirty years and yet we sit in silence,
improvisation never as easy as it seems.
Marriage a movement of love and of loss
played in equal measure.
Our shared turns of tragedy,
of sadness and rigid regrets
separate yet bind us, yoked as we are
to this life, and to each other
in deceptive cadence.
I rise to gather plates.
The geese are out this morning,
their hoarse honking, tenor tubas
in the marching band. They waddle
clockwise around the lake like so much brass,
wearing matching epaulets.
Suddenly, as if at sharp rap
of an absent conductor’s baton,
lifting their wings as one
they rise up,
flying in perfect formation.