Two

 

On a parking lot staircase

I met two fine-looking men

descending, both in slacks

and dress shirts, neckties

much alike, one of the men

in his sixties, the other

a good twenty years older,

unsteady on his polished shoes,

a son and his father, I knew

from their looks, the son with his

right hand on the handrail,

the father, left hand on the left,

and in the middle they were

holding hands, and when I neared,

they opened the simple gate

of their interwoven fingers

to let me pass, then reached out

for each other and continued on.

Ted Kooser, Splitting an Order (Copper Canyon Press, 2014)