A thousand visits to the supermarket
A thousand acts of sexual intimacy
Spread over forty years.
Your essence was quite other
A smile of absolute connection
Repeated a thousand times.
Your daily visits to the outside lavatory
While I stood talking outside,
An intimacy I have sought
With no other.
My greatest fear is that you might
Have changed beyond recognition,
Submerged in trivia and the
Minutiae of the quotidian.
At ten my adoration of you was total.
At sixty its somewhat greater:
I place you among the angels and madonnas
Of the quattrocento, Raphael and Masaccio
And Petrarchs sonnets to Laura.
