idly dreaming

In This Gentle Hour

In this gentle hour I am alone
though somehow your love pervades,
sheltering me from melancholy and wind gust
whipping folds of mercury, flaps of grey flannel
across the lake, painting windows framed by walls
where inside, safe and sound, I sit quietly listening
to my mother's voice through an answering machine
which somehow manages to mask her advancing age
and the burden of my father's dementia not easliy forgotten
here in this gentle hour where I await with calm idle your return
while we are still young and idly dreaming of growing old together.