The Wedding Picture

The Wedding Picture
By Narendra Luther

The wedding picture on the wall
A couple - young and handsome,
Looking dotingly at each other,
Or smiling deeply into the camera’s lens.
Or looking away - together - at some distant object,
Dreamily!
Love that is undying and intense
Glowing like embers!
The future holding God-knows what treasures
A gift-box not yet unwrapped.

* * *
The couple in the sitting room
Mellowed by years of conjugality,
Looking in different direction, wanly
Searching different memory lanes.
The gift-box unwrapped and emptied.
Trials and triumphs and frustrations of a lifetime
Furrowed on their flaccid faces.
Love - those ‘embers for a year’; ‘ashes for thirty’;

The wedding picture on the wall
Smiles down upon them
From another world -- that was.

* * *
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