The Institution, or Sometimes You Don’t Know You’re Being Held

It is a symbiosis,

this thing.

This mad, lifelong, love affair

that has raged

across the shores of time;

that has as often been

tempest as drought.

That has somehow kept out

elements of undoing, of easy leaving.

A force that has not been quelled,

but has given and shared life.

The husband and the wife,

overseers and underwriters of the life long-lived,

they have stood in each other’s slipstream

and bathed their feet.

They have drunk deep

from the unnamed waters

that have sustained them.

The hole in my father’s jumper

and the curl in my mother’s hair

seem to complement each other.

They are of a piece.

They hold together.

From opposite ends of the house,

known to them or not,

they do it still.