I see them sometimes at the grocery store

When I’m there in the morning . . . their years

Negotiating with the realities of their lives –

She nudging her walker and he his cane.

Some days the years must win, but not today.

They take one of the small carts so he can

Navigate the narrow aisles with one hand.

She chooses the meat and he the vegetables,

And together they pick through the new

Potatoes and struggle with the plastic bag;

Two oranges, a grapefruit, the cheaper apples

And a few peaches for the pies she still bakes.

Simple needs for lives that seem simple too

On the surface . . . but almost more than

I can bear to watch, shopping alone in the

Crippled complications of my own life . . .

They go to the lane where the checker

Knows their names, pay with crumpled bills,

And the bag boy knows their old sedan.

And I think of them driving, slowly, to the

Old house they have lived in for fifty years,

All the spaces that have grown around them,

Comfortable and cluttered with old photographs,

Bedrooms filled with memories of children

Who now have grown children of their own.

After dinner I see them sitting quietly in the

Pale light of an old phonograph and listening

To a Big Band record or a young Sinatra . . .

And she takes his hand and puts her head

On his shoulder in a gesture as familiar to him

As her beautiful face . . . and for one more

Night they are young again . . . and dancing,

Gracefully gliding in the pale yellow glow of the

Old phonograph and the fierce light of their love.