Devoted Lover
He shuffles along
with a stake in his heart
as fast as he can
to get home in time
to scratch his wife’s back.
He passes dog walkers,
young girls jumping rope,
and spray-painted walls
with erotic images.
He can’t stop grinning
at every woman he sees.
Grieving wears him out,
and he forgets his wife
is no longer there.
What a cold dark night.
.
Don’t Leave Without Me
Is all I kept saying
to my dying wife
lying in a hospice bed.
She could no longer speak,
but would faintly nod her head.
I must have been suffering
from temporary insanity
to be possessed with worry
that she might run off with
someone else in the next world.
© Milton P. Ehrlich
Milton P. Ehrlich, Ph.D. is a 90-year-old psychologist and a Korean War veteran who began writing poems after the age of seventy. He has published many of his poems in periodicals such as the Toronto Quarterly, Wisconsin Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times.
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