Other Life


In that other life, today is my wedding anniversary.
Many years, many “debates,” and many reconciliations
stretch across that life.

This morning,
I pick up a monthly literary book someone subscribed me to.
It is a book, not a magazine – 3/4 inches thick – a mix of stories,
poems and pictures. Last night, again, I debated renewing
at the special price. The giver died, a woman of some stature
who gifted me, and now the publication sends a poem and letter
that honors her and tastefully offers a one year renewal
at a reduced rate to those she had gifted.

I opened it, and oddly found myself at the first page
(a random act seldom finds the known edge).
It begins with a poem by Brian Turner,
Gilgamesh, in Fossil Relief. He ends it with:

History is a cloudy mirror made of dirt
and bone and ruin. And Love? Loss? Immortality?
These are the questions we must answer again
by war and famine and pestilence, and again
by touch and kiss, for each age must learn
this is the path of the sun’s journey by night.

The sun’s journey by night, I ponder that
and the woman I met in that cloudy mirror
and the woman I have yet to meet here.
The woman who comes into this age knowing,
by touch and kiss, how to answer
the questions before us
in the sun’s journey by night.


RD Savage
© 12/17/04

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