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						OBSTACLES by Barry Tebb 
						
						A thousand visits to the supermarket
  A thousand acts of sexual intimacy
  Spread over forty years.
  Your essence was quite other
  A smile of absolute connection
  Repeated a thousand times.
  Your daily visits to the outside lavatory
  While I stood talking outside,
  An intimacy I have sought
  With no other.
  My greatest fear is that you might
  Have changed beyond recognition,
  Submerged in trivia and the
  Minutiae of the quotidian.
  At ten my adoration of you was total.
  At sixty it’s somewhat greater:
  I place you among the angels and madonnas
  Of the quattrocento, Raphael and Masaccio
  And Petrarch’s sonnets to Laura.						 
						
						
						
						
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