ted kooser

An Old Photograph

by: Ted Kooser
from: Sure Signs (1980)

This old couple, Nils and Lydia, 

were married for seventy years.

Here they are sixty years old

and already like brother

and sister - small, lustless eyes, 

large ears, the same serious line

to the mouths. After those years

spent together, sharing

the weather of sex, the sour milk

of lost children, barns burning, 

grasshoppers, fevers and silence,

they were beginning to share

their hard looks. How far apart

they sit; not touching at shoulder

or knee, hands clasped in their laps

as if under each pair was a key

to a trunk hidden somewhere, 

full of those lessons one keeps

to himself.

                They had probably

risen at daybreak, and dressed

by the stove, Lydia wearing

black wool with a collar of lace, 

Nils his worn suit. They had driven

to town in the wagon and climbed

to the studio only to make

this stern statement, now veined

like a leaf, that though they looked

just alike they were separate people, 

with separate wishes already

gone stale, a good two feet of space

between them, thirty years to go.