Holding On by Jack Powers

A couple in their nineties announce they're getting divorced. Why now?
they're asked. We wanted to wait until the children had died. If children
follow romance, what follows children? I study old neighbors for clues.

Sally sits on our stonewall when her hip acts up on walks. Her husband, Phil,
sits beside her and lets her do the talking. What's your name again? she asks me.
They hold hands like seventh graders. Our children are all grown and gone.

Gil and Cindy sit outside when it's warm. He talks openly about her dementia.
When it's cold, she sneaks out of the house and walks. She doesn't go far,
Gil says. I keep an eye on her from the window. She says she's going home.

The Porters kept the house like a museum of knickknacks and photographs.
It smelled like 1962, the year Ben coached the football team to the State title.
He drove the old pick-up. Liz made lunch. She died three days after Ben.

Each anniversary, a couple in their nineties sky dives using one chute.
Asked the secret of their longevity, they said, Make sure you go together.



Jack Powers is the author of Everybody's Vaguely Familiar and Still Love. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. Jack won the 2015 and 2012 Connecticut River Review Poetry Contests and was a finalist for the 2013 and 2014 Rattle Poetry Prizes. Visit his website at http://www.jackpowers13.com/poetry/.