Need, Not Love Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

I can see her still,
sitting, wrapped in green,
Loden made her look so,
well substantial if you know
what I intend to say,
so many decades now
have gone like locusts,
chasing hungry thoughts,
there was so much of it,
the thing we both assumed
was real love, it had,
due to the will of God,
been slow in coming, very,
but joy was there, a bench
of weathered Northern pine,
gawked at by the majestic eyes
of two white swans, in love
a strange duality of fate,
we did, as you might guess,
the usual things, with hands,
and buttons, awkward clasps
until the tower struck the time,
she had a curfew to obey,
a tyrant would enforce his law.
Yes, it was wild and innocent,
we learned so quickly on the fly,
and guarded a great treasure then
with the tenacity of romanticism,
an era made for secrecy of youth.

When Colonel Sander swept the land,
first whiff reminded me of you,
fried chicken at the Frankfurt Zoo,
eaten without the cutlery and licked,
it's where the term of fingerlicking
could, and maybe did originate,
you later told me, in a moment of
serenity, while commandeering beds
belonging to your folks, how you had smiled
deep down, especially when cleaning up
my thumb, you'd picture what you had not seen,
and kept it to yourself until the very day.

How might she be, the thought appeared
to leave again but it returned, to bug
and tug, it would relieve the stresses of
an academic queen, a life of smoke and caffeine.

It was so easy then to re-connect, how quaint
to travel back in time and pick a rose
that had now grown above the weeds of life
and then been trampled by a pair of careless feet,
it was like having found a treasure from the past,
enriching every day and sometimes nights.

And then it happened, spending precious time
has always been your thing, you made your choice
in milliseconds, I was there and took a photograph
of you, all cap 'n gown at the cathedral in Cologne.
You changed your life my sweet, they'd done the big lavage,
no thought of mine had been left in that pretty brain,
we took that cruise, if you recall, just up the Rhine,
and you explained and cut my heart to smithereens.
Heck you were right my girl of wonderful old times,
it was not love that had survived these many years,
for only need can ever hope to make that grade,
and love for others must be doomed and sure to fade.

I raised my glass to her: 'I'll send you some new rhymes.'
And I will always do my best (though she is kind) ,
and twice a year she finds an envelope of size
inside the fruits of an old fool he calls his art,
but I am happy to have seen inside her eyes
that I can keep this girl forever in my heart.