The bricked streets darken home.
Summer night, thirty years ago.
By the single wan streetlight
Birch, dogwood, hydrangea
Steeped in indigo shadow.
And ourselves also:
Both of us comely and young.
But, laughing in the back seat of a Pontiac
You've fallen headlong into sexual joy,
While I, frightened by an idea, have touched no one
In the warm privet shadows hedging the place where I live.
The darkness of time
Hides from us what would hurt us-
That we will not even meet each other
Till you have white hair
And I, many small wrinkles about my eyes.
Ah, it's no use to wish ourselves back
To a summer night
When we still had our lives to choose.
Given who we are,
I cannot think how we might have met earlier
Or in any other place or way.
No use either
To search beyond the light
Pooling these vivid night flowers
For what's to come.
It may be what the shadows hide will not hurt us.
A dark night.
Swing of the Pleiades, the fallen moon.
Nightly we lie down to sleep alone
Wishing for what's been gone
These thirty years.