What Ages. What Does Not.

You look across the diner and there is a young woman
with dark brown curls, the spitting image
of a crush you had when you were maybe twenty-three,
A young woman all artist and poetry
with an Alabama draw and a careless sexuality.
Not even a fling, just a thought, a brief rise
of the passion young men are prone to.

A strange thing passion. Supposedly it fades with time
but somehow, it never quite did
and here you are embarrassingly old
still living moments of it as you look across the table
in the mornings, at the woman you love
in a fit of wonderment that there are so many
second and third changes in life
and you have used them all to the fullest,
trusting there will always be another,,

constantly surprised, waiting for your heart’s surrender
to age.But maybe not. You remember
your grandfather, flirty at eighty
to the embarrassment of my grandmother,
in a moment I used to think was cute, but now
recognize was something different,
one of the last vestiges of youth that refused to die,
giving you a strange comfort as the clock ticks one more time
and you are finally, at sixty-seven, able to ignore it
and simply live.

About this poem

I have had people tell me I have a different sense of time than most people. Maybe so.

The picture was taken at the Birds Eye Diner in Castleton, Vermont.

Tom