It was never a specific night,
I don’t think.
I can not recall the moment our
deference occurred.
Perhaps,
the job a summer
(A lifetime?) ago,
where you met an
entirely new
sort of situation.

They were big plans
and long nights and
days and days and miles
and miles and miles
together,
our words still
worth a good god damn
weighed up and even,
with twenty dollars between us
and a quarter-tank of gas
if we were lucky.

But millions of screaming insects
drown even the strongest
swimmer, and even when one
puts to port, there’s
never any guarantee
of safe and greener
pastures.

The soul tends to shake
-and violently-
when suddenly ripped apart.
I’m sure you both screamed,
but trees fall every day,
and no one hardly
hears a sound in these
forests.

But deference is a fickle thing,
subject to wit and apt to whimsy.
There are a million roads
all across this great wide planet.
Some run long, others but a
zig-zag.
Maybe these paths will
jog again together.

Then again, perhaps,
we have ever and finally
Deferred.