I would wait a lifetime

to kiss you, to feel that tender skin

now sweet with middle age

and soon to become lined, matured,

taken beyond the late teen I knew

to the world of womanhood

and with the next step,

Time’s next artistic breath,

near dust, near rust, near the echo of the youthful

freckled girl I once dreamed of;

I would wait a lifetime to kiss you

as it would show we had lived all our lives

in each other’s company.

Ian D. Hall 2017