Side by Each

Edward Higgins

“But at my back I always hear/ Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near. . . . “
–from Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress

When departed from one another,
only remembered kisses to sustain us,

laughter at missing one another
even a short few days—

knowing the return sweeter for the absence:
doves returned to the dovecote,

cooing in our love-nest.
Will we love each other forever

as in those endless love songs?
Not considering mortality’s swift

undercutting of all love’s declarations?
Yet we embrace what forevers

we have. So let us as in Marvell’s coy
poem: though we cannot make

our sun/Stand still, yet we will make him run.