Love Is, We Are {Poetry}

Love is we are 15,
and we are fragile,
our egos, our bodies,
still growing,
stirred by life,
and desire,
and the moisture of lust,
and we seek attention,
and make foolish decisions,
and have unrequited feelings,
that never reach closure, 
or fruition,
and we are in our heads,
a cloudy fantasy,
of bleachers, and a corsage, and secrets kept,
of all those things we don’t understand,
the things we will remember,
though never perfectly clear.
the things we don’t forget.

Love is we are 23,
and we are finding
something new,
we are writing our own rules,
or at least looking beneath a few rocks,
to figure and seek,
a path, and some answers, all of it,
all of life as it comes,
so quickly, in a blink,
and even though
we are much too young
to comprehend what
years can do,
the accumulation,
how they can
change our ideas, our perspectives,
how they knead and mold us to think,
about giving more,
and taking less,
or taking more,
and giving less,
it’s what the early lost years do.

Love is we are 36,
wrapped up
inside our children,
or maybe not,
maybe we are 36,
going on 37,
a steady gallop to the middle,
and maybe we are happy, but
maybe we also have some building resentments,
unfinished business,
some unsatisfied parts,
untied strings,
open containers,
because we are still looking,
still uncovering,
still finding ways
to quench our thirst for meaning,
to love unconditionally,
while remaining individuals,
and making dinner,
and paying bills,
and teaching all that is much too difficult,
for quaking human beings to teach,
unless we are actively setting examples,
and limits,
and going against our very nature,
a nature that wishes for things, 
such as youth, and candy, 
and a sometimes ugly truth.

Love is we are 50,
and we have arrived,
yes, we are turning a corner,
and we have less responsibility,
so we are feeling…oh so selfish,
but my God it’s beyond delicious,
when the hardest work is over
and though our hearts, and our parts are saggy,
perhaps a bit depleted,
less supple,
they are still alive,
and they still feel,
they have waited so long to really live,
and our love now,
should feel easier,
so much easier, to give.

Love is we are 88
and we are all the way back to fragile,
we are breakable, but still unbroken,
grateful for life,
still seeking something to touch,
there is energy between us
but perhaps not quite as much,
and there are words still left unspoken,
a lifetime lived,
our hands, our legs, our trunks, our minds, 
entwined, like DNA,
knowing, 
still growing, 
still showing up,
being, 
but not perfect,
not easy,
still filling each other’s cup.

Love is we are
sometimes lost in our thoughts, 
in our own memories,
and we know now, finally now, 
that living – it requires 
a thousand lifetimes, 
maybe a million more,
and if we took a few more chances, 
settled less, 
left everything on the floor, 
if we laughed abundantly, 
and made a little mess,
without tallies or keeping score. 
we have perhaps reached the end,
knowing that real love 
was never quite as pure 
as those poets dead and living 
would have us believe, 
it’s a rocky, twisting road, 
to nowhere, 
with nothing much to show,
except
to those who bore sacred witness, 
for those who watched it grow.

Love is, we are, 
slowly saying goodbye, 
shifting from light to darkness, 
ever moving along,
our stories, 
our lives,
forever married,
in time, 
a stop, a start, 
one precious, beating heart, 
precariously carried, 
from splitting, living cells, 
to empty shells, 
from shine to rust,
from ashes, 
back to dust.