=Promise=

We have
a promise that I mean to keep.
Perhaps you have forgotten,
but I have not.
Perhaps you thought I did not mean it,
but I did.
Something conspires to keep
me from fulfilling this promise.
I've held now for awhile,
and will hold you
to my word and yours,
when next we meet.
But meeting, it seems so unlikely,
that I'll avoid it.
Not to avoid keeping that promise,
but perhaps to hold
that wayward promise in hopeful stasis
until the day there will be
no need for promises between us to keep.
Yes, just that one promise
I can still embrace and claim
from you in distant graves.