A Long Poem From a Brief Encounter

I saw him before I saw her…(I believe she was holding the door.) There was a far away look in his eyes as he shuffled his feet on the floor. I felt a twinge of sorrow for him as he slowly labored past Each step seemed so difficult…more challenging than the last. I saw her next when she caught up to him and I thought how nothing could compare with the smile on her face as she helped him to his chair. She fixed his hair, she straightened his clothes with an ease, a tenderness…a grace and as she tended to his every need that smile never left her face. I did not know this couple whom I assumed were man and wife but as I watched them endure the ravages of age I imagined younger moments in their life. The moment hey first met, when they fell in love…when they lived in younger skin I imagined them with friends and family…imagined all the places they had been… A lifetime spent in love together was not difficult to surmise I saw it in the gentleness of her touch…and in the sparkle of her eyes. When our eyes met for a moment I saw how her smile was masking her pain and I thought how the more her husband slips away…the more her love remains. I believe when we happen upon one another…even momentarily in a day from every brief encounter…we take something away. It may be a look…a smile…a glance…a gesture from afar that finds it’s way into our heart and reshapes who we are. As I left my brief encounter and walked to my car in a misty rain I thought about that moment…about how she smiled through her pain… and though there was a hint of sadness as I drove home by the sea it wasn’t her sadness…it was her love…I took away with me. A love so beautiful…so everlasting…so quietly proclaimed It made me smile when I thought of it… knowing I’d never be the same.