Real Love

Flaxen dendrites which clog my sight,
neglected moon that stole the night,
a shower of pine precedes the rain,
the glasses jingle, house champagne.
real love may be hard to find,
our love may induce the mind,
in forty years your hand is old,
and even so, 'tis mine to hold.

written October 25th, 2010, sitting outside on the fluffy-but-coarse striped deck chair up against the west side of the house. smelled cold. slight wind. nostalgic aura. cat prancing about the feet, trying to invade my lap. dog playing with the big, black, half-shredded bucket. walnut tree filtering through the UVs. should i be wearing sunscreen?

Went back and forth between posting the following:

I often view life in slow motion. Well, ideas in slow motion. Accompanied by a bittersweet piano piece. I picture myself walking down the aisle with my dad, as he half-willingly surrenders me to the man I've surrendered my life to. The phrase "father of the bride" just brings tears to my eyes. How does life go from being so simple to so incredibly complex?
He'll have a kind-sounding name, and an even moreso demeanor. He'll be gentle but ambitious, calm but caffeinated by art. By thinking, by music, by roadtrips and woven blankets. He'll be modest and love dogs, but secretly love cats more. He'll have sweet eyes and a scruffy chin, be of a humble height, and echo my beliefs, but have a voice, a canyon of his own. He'll be sensitive to comma placement and know the meaning of quixotic. He'll like sasparilla, or at least be willing to have a sip of mine in Columbia. He'll be in touch with the soul. He'll wear jeans and flannel and buy tickets to a Swell Season concert--in Ireland. He'll cry at our wedding and at the movies. He'll have a glass of wine, or sip of beer, at most, and he'll have a reasonable bedtime. He'll understand my late 19th century/hippie nature, and maybe have one of his own. He'll write poems and prose, and he'll play guitar. He'll have a big, or at least kind and loving, family, who has reunions in Alaska and goes backpacking. He'll like cooking, baking, and sitting on top of mountains. He'll have a warm, comfy, old stationwagon full of Beatles, Grateful Dead, and Tchaikovsky CDs, and he'll think CDs are still more classy than iPods. Points for having a turntable.
He'll push our daughter or son in a wheelbarrow around the yard, and he'll prioritize family to work. He'll slowdance with me in the middle of nowhere, and go to ballroom dance classes with me. He'll like Monterey and Santa Cruz, and he'll make song lyric references as puns and jokes. We'll do the crossword together, and agree that paper, while it kills another one of our passions, is still more personal than pixels on a screen. We'll always be in love, and find new ways to be, even when he argues that Regina Spektor has a whiny voice, and I that all Grateful Dead songs sound the same. We'll perform at coffeehouses as boyfriend and girlfriend, as husband and wife.
And we'll come home after being apart for months, days, hours--and still be just as enchanted as we were on our second date.


Talk about quixotic.