It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.
—Charles Dickens
They “courted” in their sixties, that’s how formal it felt.
Dates: not the edible kind! Not unbearably sweet,
not at first. A paper calendar hung from a nail,
a ring around one day.
When you draw a circle,
she said, you instinctively start at the top.
A careful decline, of course, then suddenly
you aren’t just falling, you’re going backwards.
At the bottom you force the ink on, because look,
the line is rising now, slightly atremble
so near the beginning.
I haven’t felt like this,
she said, since I was sixteen and had a terrible crush.
Up at the family cabin, she wandered,
staring at her cell phone for a signal, just one tower.
Her son will never understand, nor his daughter.
She tried the stony shore and waded into the lake,
waves to her thighs, phone tight to one ear,
finger in the other. A ring at last!
And there he was.