WALKING BEHIND

One day in December, Jacqueline Donnelley, at her wonderful blog Saratoga Woods and Waterways, titled her blog Walking With My Husband, and included this poem:

Bogliasco
                              by Robert Polito

I’m always running ahead of my life,

The way when we walk you are always

Three, fifteen, forty steps behind
Taking a picture, or inspecting

A bottlebrush tree, a cornice, the sea
As it breaks white on the striated rock,

As though I can’t dare look, and
I’m always running away from myself

The way when we walk you are always
Asking me to slow down, and what will happen

When one of us dies, and, if it’s me first,
There’s no one’s back in our photos anymore.

The poem struck home for me. So many times I’ve lagged behind, taking pictures of everything and anything, including my husband’s retreating back. I was always asking him to slow down. Now, time has taken its toll and he toddles along behind me. I wait for him to catch up. I wait patiently. I would wait forever for that dear man.