NOTE: Most of you know me and Margaret well. For those who don’t, here the briefest context. We met—and dated seriously for a year—in college. Then, after other marriages, we reconnected around 40 and married each other. Now, after 23 years of marriage, we both feel the urgency and peril of the socio-ecological crises confronting us … and I cannot help but reflect on our love story in that light. Hence, “four score”: four sets of 20 years (more or less); three now behind us, and one just ahead …

Four-Score: A Love Story – From Beginning to End

Act 1: Beginnings
Barely twenty,
our meeting seemed no small miracle.
We talked and walked and talked some more.
Our joy was electric—and tactile.
Over tennis and racquetball,
our bodies supple and athletic,
our love was sweaty and sweet. And kind.
Our dreams were big; our future all possibility.
Until that future seemed impossible
to us.

Act 2: Adulting
Fast forward to the near edge of forty
and the far side of heartbreak.
Other marriages no more, we met again
and somehow our impossible future
became just possibly possible again.
(Or perhaps truly possible for the first time.)
Now full grown,
and each with a nest of children,
nonetheless our love felt new.
No longer young, yet still so
electric, tactile, sweaty and sweet.
Our future complicated
but chosen and committed to
with joy.

Act 3: Aging
Now, sixty sits several years behind,
and neither of us is who we once were.
Our nest all empty; our children all grand.
Somehow despite our active lives,
and despite love that remains
electric, tactile, sweaty, and sweet,
our bodies now host aches in abundance.
And in the stillness, we hear finitude’s whisper
that it will have its say at last.
But we counter, trading knowing glances:
we have written love
in our bones and breath,
and in our hearth and home.
And even this aging cannot untell the truth
of who we’ve been
together.

Act 4: Apocalypse
Now entering our fourth score,
and leaning as we are
into an apocalypse of planetary proportions
our love frets for sure—
but does not flinch.
Holding hands on quiet walks,
we sense the coming storms:
the twisting air and heat and flood;
the material want and political tumult
that will frame this score of years
(both ours and yours);
and the burgeoning grief
for all that is being lost.
Our hands hold tight—
our love,
once so electric, tactile, sweaty, and sweet,
now settles for weathered and wise,
weary but unwavering,
tested and tempered. And kind.

So that as the world unravels
our hearts remain well-woven
as well to other hearts beyond our two.

So that these hearts can somehow
hold the world’s grief
and still be grateful each new day.

So that our children and our grands
can navigate this new unknown terrain
by referencing that familiar love
writ well in our own bones and breath
and marking out
right to the end
a path to hearth and home.

So that from first to last,
from opening to ending,
our love has made a map of joy.

David R. Weiss
August 10, 2024