A Lifetime

The sunlight softly shined in through
The breakfast window pane. The sliced
Half grapefruit glistened in the light.
And he began to drink the iced
But barely cold tomato juice.
And he began to tell his wife
The story once again, the same
Of many stories of his life
That she had heard over the years
But ten or twenty, fifty times
Or more, and yet she never tired
Of hearing what he said, like rhymes
That we have heard and want to hear
Again, the voice delivering
It being his. The stories told
Repeatedly, cold shivering
Whenever he began to tell
Of when he fell into the lake,
And when she told that funny tale,
He’d still begin to laugh and shake
Between them, all the stories known,
And still they tell them once again –
And sometimes slip into a high
And playful child voice. The sin
Would be to interrupt the tale
Once told, these stories told in dull
Late morning sunlight, its soft glare
Reflected off the cereal
In milk. The lives lived once again,
Again in each of their love’s ears
Without a fear of boredom through
The days or months or even years.
And so she told her story too,
A story she forgot she told,
A story that he knew she had
Told ten or fifty times, so old
That he had memorized the tales
She told before on other days,
And over morning milk, or nights
As they would fall into the daze
Of sleep, both happy just to hear
The voices they’d remember, fill
In all the coming years when they
Both knew and feared the air’d be still.