Time Travel

While I can still make out the figures in the grainy
print, I call them again to the surface. Life
is long, so love might outlast the distance. 

You bend over me seated in a shiny red tricycle, 
eager for the novelty of this kind of motion. Life
is long, and I'm eager to speed up the distance.

I still feel your hand on my back. A cool morning 
in our northern hills, you in a slim sheath skirt. Life's
long fringes in the pines, love a hazy plume in the distance. 

Daughter-mother-daughter: links in a chain that keeps
going. I can go faster, but must pedal harder. Life
is long; perhaps love will outlast the distance.

Every now and then my sealed heart's pried open— 
a tomb I want to walk out of, toward the light. Life
is long, promising love will outlast the distance.