Mid-teens, apprenticed, farming district, early fifties,
Work-life spent in houses with both spouses home,
And being just ’the boy’ and therefore in effect unseen
He watches carefully forced to this conclusion.
Couples never meet although they bed together,
Share a brace of children. Live in different worlds.
Complementary bodies by society’s rails converged.
Women never understood. Their value architectural..
Clear of the trenches he has met the other side,
The analogue of his mind in an older-woman’s head.
She widowed, of his parents generation, one of his bosses.
Like him not lock-stepped to pervading group-think
Their ‘fellow-Martian’ recognition hard to be explained.
They’re somehow kin and meld as a sure match.
Local lore would see it ‘mother-son-she-never-had’
Or sex. Congress of men and women highly suspect.