photo: morgan harlow
Simply eating her salad
by Michael Estabrook
Sometimes I become completely overwhelmed
by merely being in her presence,
like this afternoon
at McDonald’s with the grandchildren,
suddenly I’m choked with emotion,
barely able to speak,
while simply watching her
sitting there eating her salad, quietly,
unassumingly.
I had to work at not crying,
(What a silly spectacle I would have been.)
dabbing at my eyes
with a crumpled McDonald’s napkin.
“Guess my eyes are watering
because it’s so cold outside.”
(Sure, nice try, you silly old man.)
I can understand being so smitten
when you first fall in love – how can you help it!
The beauty, the youth, the vigor and vitality,
the inescapable mystery of it all,
crashing over you like an avalanche in the Alps .
But come on! I’ve been at this now a long time,
with this woman almost half a century!
How could it be possible
that I still get all choked up watching her
sitting there simply eating her salad?
~ first published in Imitation
Fruit Literary Journal
