Controlled Descent

May 20 2020

First dance

first kiss

first touch,

tentative

intimate

lascivious.

The fine art of seduction

and the moment she submits,

unclasped

undone

unzipped.

Where it has always begun.

When we were young

and sure we were immortal,

doubted anyone before us

had ever felt such heat.

From significant other

to committed couple

to falling in love.

Or maybe not quite falling

for those who are cautious, or fearful

or shy.

Who try to control their descent

and hope to land softly,

parachuting down

into unfamiliar terrain

hearts racing anxiously.

But who, in the end

surrender just the same.

While the middle of love

is not nearly so vertiginous.

And hardly the promised land

of happy-ever-after.

The place where every couple

inhabits a foreign country

with its own peculiar customs

and local vernacular.

Not just the unlikely ones

who leave you scratching your head

at how they ever got together

and then how they stayed,

but the well-matched ones, as well;

whose private lives

we can also only guess at.

And where the rest of us

are merely travellers

taking-in the sights;

the drawn blinds

of their well-appointed homes,

the traditional dance

of man and wife.

So movies are made about falling in love,

about bad marriages

fresh starts

and falling out.

But what about attachment?

What about the old married couple

you watch across the floor

dancing arm in arm?

As they did at senior prom,

inexpertly swaying

to a slow romantic song

whose words they know by heart.

Companions

life partners

and soul-mates,

still lusting, in a sensible grown-up way.

Who have survived the fall

and are now firmly grounded.

Who overcame, together

all the unexpected tremors

and treacherous terrain.

His hand

in the small of her back

quietly inching lower.

Her head on his shoulder

eyes drifting shut.

This began as a short self-indulgent amusement: a playful word-play patter poem that messed around with combinations like couples and lovers and significant others, who lust and touch, fight and make up. But it was a real disaster. Except when it took me to the last part in the life cycle of a romantic relationship, and the old married couple on the dance floor appeared, written in a little more conventional style.

So I kept them, then went back to the beginning for a fresh start with a better idea of what the poem's structure should be: that it would begin with infatuation, but then move on to the middle of love and end in attachment.

The old married couple are still dancing. A romantic view of marriage, I know. The old married couple, who can sit quietly together: comfortable in their own skin, content in each other's presence.