Welcome to Gaia! ::

The Younger Man

I took for granted your longing for me,
that I was beautiful to you
and soft, my skin resilient, dappled, shiny,
the thing your hands hungered for
even in sleep - that holding my small body
between your palms made you large and strong
and entering me filled you with the power
of giving in, giving yourself over to me
and I knew it would always be so.

But now the wound: that as my body ages,
this vulnerable soft sack that holds me,
you have brought a new obsession to our bed,
our daily lives - a younger man
taut, hard-bodied, bony, so my cheek
mashed against his clavicle aches for your softness,
the hollow where I laid my face,
nuzzled your warm smooth neck,
not this thin sinew so unwelcoming
and yet, so healthy and so beautiful.

We both marvel at him in the mirror.
Timidly we praise his flat belly, his long,
well-muscled legs, and for hours each day
we admire his strength, agility, his grace
on the courts, his tennis whites bright
against his wet brown skin -

My wrecked body,
on its downhill journey, however meandering my course,
cannot fill your longing for your own body, climbing briskly,
inexhaustibly upward - a longing for the younger man
you never were -- and to press the weight of the world
up and off your shoulders, to lightly jog
before the years, tirelessly lapping yourself,
topping your personal best.

While I stand in the garden, a book forgotten in my hand,
gazing out over the rows of lupine and forget-me-nots,
you are passing on the road below
your hard well-muscled legs
running,
running.

When an airline purchases an airplane
from a manufacturer of airplanes
is the plane delivered or is it picked up?
In either case, who pays for the airfare
to either travel to pick up the plane,
or travel back home after delivering it?