Stepmother

Exhausted and silent,
Driving back
From the nursing home,
We arrive
At her appartment
Which used to be ours.

She makes tea,
She sits down,
She talks about the time
When she took my father dancing
And she did such an excellent job
Leading him around the dance floor
That a stranger came up to their table
Knelt down, and begged my father
For a permission to dance with her.
"Your father," she tells me,
"Never was happier, never was happier."

I want to leave but don't
It is only an old lonely woman
Recollecting her happiness--
An existential moment,
Dear to poets and those
Who fear their own old age.