In the waiting room
There’re all these darling couples

All this youth and love

All this wrapped-up-in-each-other sweetness

Primped and dressed for world-presentation

There are undeniable glimpses of the behind-closed-doors them:

Their private life and intimacy’s

Worn out here too –

In the way they look deep

(with suggestions and strains of hungry)

Light touches

The business of their daily’s

Peppered with playful talk and soft laughter

They’re marked by an insulating strength

In their unuttered yet undeniable shared secret

Bound together by the primal-est bindings 

To threaten their unity-strength’s

To threaten one’s own pullulation 

Their occasional comfortable silence carries 

Right back to comfortable sharing

Inadvertently staring 

My can’t-help-it-you’re-so-beautiful sunshine

Tries soaking in theirs

Without interrupting their gravity 

Aware of my olderness and otherness

I’m startlingly struck by and reminded about the wonderfulness of people-potential

When we’re bound together by life and love

Cautioned afresh about the fragility and power of the ties that bind us

All this protected selfish loving and I

Remember our sameness

This part of humanness and

How every love affair’s uniquely its own and

Every love affair’s a wonderful miracle

As common as day

Remarkable as light

All these lovely swelling bellies

Testament to life and hope and LOVE

The preservation and perpetuation of all these 

A love affair of all of us