Love Poem Ending with a Phrase from Stern
Waiting on the porch for my wife
to join me for a movie and dinner,
I wonder about the life
I might have lived if I hadn’t stopped
into the candy store I was passing
that night forty-five years ago
and continued down Falls Street
into some different life my imagination is trying
hard to follow through the maze of streets
and years when Rita steps out the door
smiling and walks beside me to the car,
goosing me, earthy as she is, into a laugh,
into the closeness of hands and eyes,
into my one, lucky life.