My mind is an old, oaken, roll-top-desk.

A real antique.

Not some clap-board reproduction.

With pigeon holes, little sliding drawers

and a long, narrow, junk-drawer,

the catch-all for everything else that fits,

and a locked safe

and a file box

and a long slate slab

to take on all the scratches and dents

and a monthly calendar reminding me

of right choices and missed chances.

One little drawer I visit in my dreams

is labeled “EROS”.

(You call it what you will.)

When I fall off to sleep,

that drawer slides open

of its own volition

and, like smoke or Hogwarts wraiths,

they come out in a piece of a sentence,

or a word:

“How can I please you, dear?”

“Well! We’ve never done THAT before!”

“Oh! ”

“Again?…”

Or names,

so many names from so far back

to a time when I didn’t know

there was a drawer for them.

Sheryl,

a sixth grade girl

with a thirty-year-olds ideas,

who rode on the cross bar of my bike

like she was home

while my eighth grade legs peddled her

wherever she wanted to go.

Or Margret Ann

who clung to my back

as we flew down a packed-snow-hill

until the crowd went home

and we were the only ones left

and still we sled on and on

into the winter twilight,

then trudging home,

carrying the sled together,

hands touching,

we defied her mothers curfew.

And Madalyn, Lee, Cynthia, Louise, Betsy and…..

and,

for 27 years and counting,

Nancy,

woven into all my lives,

who smiles through all my jabbering-on about my memories,

who accepts all the inclinations, limitations and realities

of my 72 year old self,

who gently opens all the drawers in my desk

with the key I handed her

when I gave her a birthday gift in a little box

and said,

“Think of it as an engagement ring, … if you’d like to.”

And she said, “OK. Yes.”