I saw an old man and old woman walking today,
white heads tilted together, stepping in the same cadence,
almost joined at the hips, clothes rustling together,
an old attachment still holding strong in the last of their days.
The man leaned further down and said something to the woman,
and she looked up at him, smiling at what he had said,
a light coming through the crepe like skin of her face
so brightly that she wore the blushing glow of a young woman again.
I imagined them when they first met, new love on the rise,
purloined kisses, her trilling laughter like a songbird’s call at the break of dawn,
his strong arm placed around her waist for a quick unseen moment,
and both sweetly serious as they stood together in a new marriage.
Sons and daughters, maybe, years flying by, homes and jobs,
still stolen kisses, still laughter, still touching in the rush of the day,
walking together but not always in time, steps a little out of rhythm,
but always that attachment of love over time, through time.
How perfect, I thought, that their attachment is so strong.
Now that they are in the most frail time of their life,
thin bones, fine hair, translucent skin, faltering steps,
that attachment, woven of love and steeped in a rich life,
will bind them together until the end of their days and beyond.
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