The Old Marrieds

My body depends on your body.
There are no exceptions.
You lean and touch
to tell me which way I should go.
We may be slow,
but are glad to be walking together.

The sun puts at risk old conclusions.
The things we know
have too often turned to illusion.
Even winter's cold
makes clear as a warm summer day
how the flesh plays tricks:
getting fat or fading away.

All significance lies in patterns.

Joy can only reach
as far as the joy we reach after
itself can reach,
a fact only touching can teach.
We are mostly dumb.
When everything finally is said,
it's no longer tongues,
but fingers and hands doing talking.

The facts
wash in at our feet and wash out again.
There is always wind,
on-shore and off-shore is the difference.
When the tide comes in
and fills up holes we have dug,
even thoughts of sex,
worn thin as the rings on our hands,
slide away on sand.

Age washes sin of all meaning.
Other facts, we find,
build up in accord with dunes’ habits
and we have to climb

over dune after dune to look down
where our feet once stood.

Not surprising, waves are still crashing.

We sit a dune
high up where the tide cannot reach
and observe the trails
the sandpipers feeding are leaving,
cast out and reeled in between waves,
always interlocking.

To sit in the sun is a blessing.
We use the time
to sift through the shells we've picked up
and wipe free of sand.

We find fragments the most attractive,
since we, too, continue at cost,
but can still refuse
when encouraged to deny what we've lost:
the kind of news
we share as property common.