Interval

There is a forty-one year tale to tell

—could I but find the words to make it plain.

Two book-ends bracket our shared domain:

the start, the lobby of a Greek hotel

in summer, where we met and all was well;

the end, the moment life just seemed to drain

away from you, in those last days of pain,

another summer, home in Camberwell.

Between the endpoints there were many days

—or should have been—for many kinds of loving.

Did I love enough? use every day?

Days for seeing you in different ways.

Days enough for giving and receiving.

I cannot say.