Worry had slimmed the body down
to a fine tune-less reed
that managed only a hiss
when a breeze passed over it.
Stiff and dry, he'd lost
the give and take of youth,
the suppleness of starting out.
She tolerated this; and he,
seeing in her an equal deprivation
was saddened for them both.
How rapidly life runs on before
and never looks back. Her face,
sometimes in sleep, relaxed into
the brown-eyed girl he'd fallen for
and pinned in marriage. His face,
dozing in a chair, she sometimes
pondered and had come to fear.
It was the bleak neutrality
that lamed them both.
Against a mutual slope they laboured
slowly, slowly to a far horizon -
could possibly have settled for less.