Lying apart now, each in a separate bed,
He with a book, keeping the light on late,
She like a girl dreaming of childhood,
All men elsewhere - it is as if they wait
Some new event: the book he holds unread,
Her eyes fixed on the shadows overhead.
Tossed up like flotsam from a former passion,
How cool they lie. They hardly ever touch,
Or if they do it is like a confession
Of having little feeling - or too much.
Chastity faces them, a destination
For which their whole lives were a preparation.
Strangely apart, yet strangely close together,
Silence between them like a thread to hold
And not wind in. And time itself's a feather
Touching them gently. Do they know they're old,
These two who are my father and my mother
Whose fire from which I came, has now grown cold?
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somber about warmth that was not to be written short
"One Flesh" is conrtavening possibly devout vows with swiftness of requisite aging infring to find a stride apart from pre-requisite strives, it seems.
There is the fact without the ignoring known or insomniac candle so to speak :
"He with a book, keeping the light on late"
or other aches as I've read of a woman with endometriosis getting few hours of sleep all week once. So, at first, it could be that one part of the body of union work doesn't satisfy signals but selfishly. However, this midnight oil is by the mattress burned single perhaps post meno-pause unproverbially, but the house isn't down from being shared, where a letter table is missed by the other though when there are authors.
But vicarious living isn't the appendage to 'tilll death do us part when on the octogenarian half, nor vague vagary of remembering :
"She like a girl dreaming of childhood,
All men elsewhere - it is as if they wait"
& I know from personal opposite experience of such parts. But here it is emphasized their preconceived forced separateness is supposedly when past child-bearing age so to keep marriage of chasteness like no divorce on other counts. It all goes to the wayside of emotions when things are made up against the ecstacy that is not for quota but craving caving in on the room unless the vacant look leaves in a run to each other :
"Or if they do it is like a confession
Of having little feeling - or too much."
So a doctrine is what turns their rings more than the two of them, but it tucks past the knuckle, and knowledge is still wondered.
The last stanza seems to take it from card to chalkboard but it is a different perspective from a grandaughter obviously without shock, except for one more asking. -
This poem was very, very good. At first I thought it was talking about two young people till I got to the end of it. I really like this poem, I give it 5 stars!!!
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