FEEL THE GRAVITY / *image by Amalie Flynn*

WHERE WE ARE NOW

Neruda wrote: You are mine; rest your dreams in my dream.
I wish that I could write that to you. I love you that much.
More. But because I do, I couldn’t. Couldn’t possibly.

We are approaching 80; the end is coming more and more into sight—
we’ve begun to feel it in our bones, our throats, even in our thoughts—
and women like you don’t rest their dreams in men’s dreams,
even in macho men’s, like the great Neruda’s. If they ever did.

You and I have had marriages that ended, spouses we watched die.
We have grandchildren, pensions, headaches, joint pains, and regrets
Books we started and will never finish, sweaters we haven’t worn for years.
Life promised so much and has given so much. If not everything.
Some of what we’ve done endures, some disintegrated to ashes, to dust.
You are my star, incandescent, lighting up the inevitable horizon.

As we complete the journey and feel the gravity of the black hole,
what can I offer you now, ask of you, try to provide?
Come in just a little closer and hold me even more tightly.
Walk alongside me, my love. Let’s lean on each other, lean together.
Wrap yourself around me and rest your warm old head on my old head.
Help me to remember. Help me to forget

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Marty Krasney

Marty Krasney’s poetry and short stories have been published in Areté, Courtship of Winds, Innisfree, El Portal, Evening Street Review, Frost Meadow Review, MacGuffin, Marlboro Review, Missouri Review, Mudlark, Tricycle, and Witness, and he has completed a novel, The Bees of the Invisible. He has studied writing with Richard Bausch, Patrick Donnelly, Lynn Freed, George Garrett, Robert Hass, Brenda Hillman, Edmund Keeley, and Tom Mallon. His long and varied career as an organizational executive culminated with ten years as the founding executive director of Dalai Lama Fellows, a global network of contemplative, young social-justice activist leaders, administered since 2018 by the University of Virginia. Previously, Marty was the program director of the National Humanities Series, the first director of the Aspen Institute Executive Seminars, and the founding president of American Leadership Forum.