A Summer Idyll

We’re superannuated now, no doubt.
Impossible to overlook the facts:
age blotches skin, puts muscle tone to rout,
winnows our hair, and gives us cataracts.

Pat’s doctors rule. No whisky, gin, or wine;
he should not take long flights nor go abroad;
he eats rat-poison pills (hardly benign).
These wizards saved his life, though; I applaud.

But love is not dependent on a state
of youthful vigor, health, or pulchritude.
Beholders judge of beauty. Even late,
love is a matter of one’s temper, mood,

and that imponderable, happy drive,
that draws one to another one, unique.
We’ve made our proper idyll: we’re alive!
”and married, with a dash of modern chic.

Our time’s our pleasure. From the balcony,
we’ve seen the mountains shimmer in the haze
of mid-September sun; a maple tree
gives shade and verdant murmurings of praise.

The season’s shifting slightly; we admire
new currencies of color, which provide
exchange for wit and kindling for love’s fire”
artillery of age, old passion’s pride.