Hard bucking (32nd anniversary)

Beginning to be comfortable, we two, after all this time;
this stubborn, persevering love, sturdy now as the two
old trees we saw so long ago, growing intertwined
at water’s edge, roots and branches woven
beyond thought of separation.

We scrap, we two, like mangy backyard cats;
backs arched in comic postures, we parade in mincing
inchworm steps around each other, glaring sparks,
hissing and spitting like water on a hot griddle,
subsiding bit by bit into accustomed cooperation.

Broken like horses, we two, to narrow roles
that fit like too-tight saddles from the start,
and only in these many long years of hard bucking
against each other’s solid and weary flanks
have we begun to wear off old restraints.

And if we are, we two, each other’s pain sometimes,
harsh sandpaper grating against the other’s hard edges,
taking idle potshots at each other with blunt knives,
we are also each the other’s solace, the deep comfort
of trusted, trusting love in each other’s lives.

Older now we are, we two, grown haggard, careworn,
grey around the edges and sagging in the middle,
but still, my love, I reach at night to touch
your shoulder in the dark, and in your sleep
you take my hand and hold it to your heart.

---

And here we are, eighteen years later, coming to our fiftieth anniversary in the fall of 2015. Half a century – good grief, that’s how long old people in the newspapers are married!

Oh, wait a minute; we are old.  I keep forgetting.

But being an old couple isn’t so bad.  Who knew?  We are still each other’s solace and comfort, and the years have worn us into a fit for each other’s bumps and hollows and prickly places.  We’re Real together.  Real, and loving….and loved.

Take it from the Skin Horse, who knows:

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse.  “It’s a thing that happens when a [person] loves you.  It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.

Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.

But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

[Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit, (New York: Scholastic Inc., 1990)]

Namaste,
Susannah