The blue that startled his heart has faded:
 blue-grey like denim now her eyes by candlelight
 across the table -- and he knows the fingerprints
 of time are on him, too, though candle's bloom
 is less truthful than the unrelenting sun.
 He knows them both to be weathered in the cascade
 of the years, beyond redress -- still, his hand
 which has crept without volition over the linen
 to clasp hers, touches, not the flesh time mars,
 but the undimmed radiance of her love, pulsing
 stronger for the passage of the years since first
 he touched her. His hand tightens over hers
 in that familiar reflex which has saved him,
 times beyond remembering, from drowning.