Let’s fall for each other the second our finger tips touch and Savoy all Sunday afternoon at the Westbridge to I Know There’ll Never Be Another You.

On a soft evening let’s stroll under the pink canopy of dogwoods and through the rows of vinca and periwinkle in the Botanicals as though we were Bronx barons as rich as the Sultan of Dubai.

Let’s gorge on haggis, swill scotch and get deafened by the sounds of kilty men on bag pipes at Bear Mountain Inn, then get stuck in a snow storm too busy to notice the flurries melting on the windshield from our heat.

Let’s shred Updike’s Rabbit Run on our East Eleventh stoop, envy the kids who plie through the hydrant’s spray and stuff ourselves with kluskie, plazek and cruschiki concocted by the ladies from St. Stanislaus Church.

In Mister Conklin’s bay-hugged, dusty cottage let’s snuggle in the mildewed corner cot but not too small for us who lay hip to hip in it, warm smooth skin and misty breath under salt-encrusted eaves.A brown hair spare on a pillow, a red-winged blackbird window-ledged.

Let’s sizzle in the splendor of El Yunque andfeed the fish on Lobos Island Reef, then rhumba to the organ thumping of Escurita, the transvestite who caressed you, at Club El Diablo and gulp sopon de pescado, caldo gallego, carne frita con cebolla and chayote.

Let’s trip to Acadia in a red VW, a calico quilt whistling between the folds of its convertible top. At the edge of a cliff let’s gaze across the April Atlantic with our first child papoosed inside your jacket and conjure the Hills of Slievenamon across the sea where our roots fused forth in the morning mist.

No, instead, let’s sit at the ocean’s edge knee to knee on the beach, sand fleas pricking our toes and marvel at a beige and sage praying mantis who alights on your thigh      lingers as though he believes we will cool him forever beneath our umbrella….

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Liz Dolan’s manuscript, A Secret of Long Life, nominated for the Robert McGovern Prize, will  be published by Cave Moon Press in 2014. Her first poetry collection, They Abide, was published by March Street.A six-time Pushcart nominee and winner of The Best of the Web, she has also won an established artist fellowship in poetry and two honorable mentions in prose from the Delaware Division of the Arts. She recently won The Nassau Prize for prose. She has received fellowships from The Atlantic Center for the Arts and Martha’s Vineyard. Liz serves on the poetry board of Philadelphia Stories. She is blessed to have ten grandchildren, all of whom live on the next block.