the quiet man
Each night she dreamed of him
and always he was young again.
Waking, she winced at knowledge of his death in age,
and her slow slide from mornings when
she’d whisper “do you love me?”
and he would merely murmur mmm…….
The children of their union,
who came to see her now and then
gazed on her rings and bracelets, and remarked
“Dad must have loved you heaps.”
She closed her eyes. “Perhaps.
He never said.”
enigma
You were my median strip,
a guiding line to follow,
a safety lamp
in my dark mine of phobic fears -
I could have been
swept out to sea in any rip or current
had you not stood,
watchful,
outside the flags.
Now you are gone, and I,
surviving still,
must wonder -
was I just showing off?
