by Ellen Bryant Voigt (05/31/06).

Forward his numb foot, back
her foot, his chin on her head,
her head on his collarbone,

during those marathons
between wars, our vivid
Dark Times, each dancer holds

the other up so he,
as the vertical heap barely
moves yet moves, or she,

eyes half-lidded, unmoored,
can rest. Why these, surviving
a decimated field?

More than a lucky fit --
not planks planed from the same
oak trunk but mortise and tenon --

it is the yoke that makes
the pair, that binds them to
their blind resolve, two kids

who thought the world was burning
itself out, and bet
on a matched disregard

for the safe and the sad -- Look,
one hisses toward the flared
familiar ear, we’ve come

this far, this far, this far.


“Long Marriage” appears in Shadow of Heaven:
Poems, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2002.