Love

I see old friends desert their wives, and ask

‘Why not?’ Looked at from outside and from in

it seems improbable our love would last

this long – yet still we wear each other’s ring.

I often fret our mutual need to cling

to love or marriage is what joins our lives

from year to year – and when we come to sing

of love, it’s love, and not our love, we strive

for. Yet you dread death, but would not survive

my death, you say; and I, in foggy dreams

of widowed freedom, feel the future screw

of pain your absence turns, sharp as a scythe.

Our love is love, and so my heart redeems

a life as long as life allows, with you.

(Published in the Kent & Sussex Poetry Folio, 2015)