Michael Shepherd (8.4.1929 / Marton, Lancashire)

they’re ‘close’, we say,
wishing to be fair, kind, just;
wishing not to know too much;
in case this clouds
our mind’s clear day..

they’ve been together since, oh, since
the one she, had a bright career,
the other she, just had a ‘job’;
and now they’re old;

it would be easy for the mind
to label them… the which, the how..
and yet we know
(wishing not to know too much)
that love flows as it clearly does

and who am I and who are you
to say, to think, to guess,
that any love is ‘not quite love’; or
whose love’s just a second-best…

and as you see them walking slow,
Darby and Darby, or Joan and Joan,
your heart's heart knows, that as death beckons,
how each dreads to die the second.