Our least compatibility!

     There were tons of shared values and in so many ways we were delightfully compatible, Joanne and I.  There was one area where we were miles apart and growing farther the more we aged. Time was not going to solve this issue as time only drew us further apart. The late model car I was loaned while my car was being repaired had a solution for our divergence but only Trygve and I got its benefit.
     Temperature comfort zones for the two of us? Never the twain shall meet. Seventy-five degrees is pushing the bottom of my comfort zone while that temperature topped out hers. She was often out in the cold of winter wrapped comfortably in a windbreaker that I'd find too light at seventy degrees.The loaner car from the body shop had individual temperature controls for each side, right and left. Perhaps that would have been even better than the compass and temperature gauge she desired in her next car.
    All this came to mind when I read the poem copied below.  Joanne loved autumn and winter, but summer? not so much. As we passed from summer into autumn and now approach winter it makes me sad that, once again, she is missing it.
   "How have I set the thermostat in her absence" you ask? At a 'chilly' 72 degrees lest the contrast be too great with other environs. As I write this I wear two shirts, a sweater and a corduroy shirt-jacket. No, I don't need gloves.

"Finally fall.
At last the mist,
heat's haze, we woke
these past weeks with

has lifted. We find
ourselves chill, a briskness
we hug ourselves in.
Frost greying the ground.

Grief might be easy
if there wasn't still
such beauty -- would be far
simpler if the silver

maple didn't thrust
it's leaves into flame,
trusting that spring
will find it again.

All this might be easier if
there wasn't a song
still lifting us above it,
if wind didn't trouble

my mind like water.
I half expect to see you
fill the autumn air
like breath --

At night I sleep
on clenched fists.
Days I'm like the child
who on the playground

falls, crying
not so much from pain
as surprise.
I'm tired of tide

taking you away,
then back again --
what's worse, the forgetting
or the thing

you can't forget.
Neither yet --
last summer's
choir of crickets

grown quiet."   Kevin Young

Takk for alt,

Al