The Eyes We First Loved

The Eyes We First Loved

(“Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, ‘Where is the good way?’ and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jeremiah 6:16)

Faintly the sounds of the vinyl spun
as we believed we knew all there was to know
of love.
We danced longer so our parents wouldn’t call
us home too soon.
We loved sandalwood, we wore paisley,
we adopted patios on summer nights
as our own.

But we have forgotten the names of those
whose eyes we first loved. We have traveled far
beyond the five-cent coffee and
newspaper kites we learned to fashion after
school.

But we remember the faces,
we remember the spaces, barely inches between us,
as we navigated parks with sloping hills,
as we wondered if holding hands was a portent
of something more.

Some of us cry as much now as we
did then,
some of us more.
Some of us try to call the same number that
we remember. Was it 415 or 213? The area codes
have changed.

Our houses were built so closely that
we talked through the windows to the girl-next-
door. Our houses were larger than life,
our flower beds were planted by someone before
we were born.

Did you ever ride your bike to visit the girl
who lived just far enough that your calls were
long-distance? Did you remind the night that some
names
are never to be forgotten?

We marry, have children, raise them to be better
than we thought we had been. But maybe
we lost
our way when we gave our first pet dog,
the one who danced around our two-year-old grinning;
when we gave our first dog Princess away
to a farmer so she would have more fun
chasing rabbits in the fields.

We should have kept her. We should have found a way
to acquaint a gray merle Australian Shepherd
with houses that were now smaller than we remembered.