Love's Last Sighting

It was just one of those things
one of those irresistible flings
a holding of hands
a stroll through the park
a mid day nap in late September.
it's never too late to spark romance.
though it could be too passed
to stoke a fading fire.

Unbeknown to each other
they once lived blocks apart;
she in ritzy Central Park East
he in the ghetto adjoining the park
worlds apart in class and breeding,
and breeding engenders clout
and never the twain should have clouted
and intertwined like vines in a garden

It was just one of those silly things
youth wasted on the young.
the coming of age too late in the game
the persistence of lust, or could it be
the need for human warmth
when it's too passed to stoke the fading fire

She was Lorna, prim and proper
whose ancestry were founding fathers
of the Bronx, Yonkers and Staten Island
she a graduate from Barnard, top ten percent
became a literary person,
proof read many an aspiring author
wrote and published the novella,
"The Sexual Exploits of King Kong"
and its sequel, "The Kong meets Jane"

As to the last ding-dong in her multi lover experiences...
well, if a book can be judged by its cover
he was either Moroccan or Puerto Rican,
the latter of which was the factual
the former, would've been more like a fairytale

As to that Jose Vega
(which at the time, they still had not met)
after the war, he set his foot to wanderings
became in time fatigued and
finally altogether despondent
drugs can do that to a man
so can two failed marriages

Bankrupt emotionally and financially
he took a chance and held up a bank,
and had the sense not to try to outsmart beginner's luck
he disappeared in deepest Bolivia.
but home sick after years of jungle training
he returned home to East Harlem
thus, retired in the prime of life
he became intrigued in commodities
and made out fine, better than the holdup
one of those few Wall Street types,
who actually began his career with a revolver

He always feared, however,
one day he'd be discovered,
the gnawing of an elementary Catholic indoctrination
"What the heck,the more you worry,
the more likely the cause of worry is bound to catch you"
So, off he goes to yet another hiatus ---
better safe than sorry ---
this time to Upper Egypt
where he'll study esoterica,
like that of Madam Blavatsky
19th century Russian mystic
and author of "Isis Unveiled"

Meanwhile during some of the above
(and still she had not met Vega)
Lorna became terribly addicted
to cocaine usage, ironically, originating in good part
from that same region
where Vega had worked part time liaison
of course, the reference is to Bolivia
not Egypt where cotton's grown
not Andes highland coca

Now, once again stateside,
senior citizen and respectable
Jose meets for first
the socialite and socialist leaning Lorna
which had they met a generation or two before
they would have had less to converse

Indeed, youth is wasted on the young
you get smart too late to benefit from chance encounters
but better late than (as they say in Spanish) "nunca."

As they are, they are a pair
of cheerful though frail canaries
Joe Vega and Lorna Wooten
in Happy Meadows Assisted Living;
he 105, she a sprightly 97
who in full moons he dares to kiss
to which she responds, pink and blushing;
"Just you wait, you little devil
till I slip into something less constricting."