Hang On, Go Slow

My wife guards the gloss of her beauty
and does not share
willingly
the aging of her body.

And, of course, it’s true,
age does diminish the flesh,
even if the mind
is stuck in illusions of youth.

Caught up in the pocket of time,
sex is all that matters.
Even as memory fails,
bodies remember.

Nor am I any more young,
can’t even sing.
Sometimes it seems
I am but a dream in a dream.

Hang on, my body tells me,
Hang on and savor.
What we are together
will never be created again.

Should you give up and go,
we will part strangers,
even if my nails and hair
persist to grow.