Poems for a lost love: Magic

Once you told me that you wanted to see
Me grow old:  my temples grey; my ruddy
Visage wrinkled with wise distinction
You used words like that, then.  I remember.

I wonder when I look for you on the wires
If those words ever come back to you
While changing the diaper of your daughter
Who would have been ours, if the words
Had been right.

A young friend now tells me that words
Spoken or written shape his existence
You know that I know that you know that we
Know nothing is less real than the words we
Cast into the boiling pot of our lives
An incantation of being simply cannot exist

Still, I sit and scribble the words, casting back
To a time when you loved me and I loved you
And words really did make our love real and
Solid like the slick concrete I once cracked
My head against, having fallen while catching
You before you fell.