To My Wife, On Our Anniversary

July begins like June: the summer pace
Still fresh, the early dawn still kissed with dew
And wedding bells still ringing in my ears,
Which makes me all the wearier when
Sunlight begins to burn by 8 a.m.,
And all the kisses evaporate before
I’m out the door (with ringing in my ears).

My morning coffee pushes me along
A path of obligations to be met,
And on one corner of my desk is you
Being held by me, romantically:
It was another summer, long ago,
We danced the dance of newlyweds in love,
And in this frame we’ll dance a thousand years...

July continues batting. August waits
On deck, taking some sweltering practice swings
While April, May and June all take their leads;
They will be running with the pitch:
Two outs, three balls, two strikes, and two runs down
In the bottom of the ninth, playing at home.
All set, the pitch – and everybody cheers!

My second coffee, sugared up between
Sweet reveries imagining July
In terms beyond a life that’s otherwise
Decaffeinated, pushes me
To meet my obligations, nothing more.
Hot liquid on a hot day only works
To shift a body through its lower gears.

The day grows long.  Sweat trickles down my face,
Cool dew replaced with hot salinity,
And as it rolls my energy dissolves.
The summer pace turns casual.
Somewhere around the early afternoon
My thoughts of June, and you, begin to change:
the freshness fades, the ringing disappears.

Yet I would hold you even as your sun
Beats down on me all of these thousand years,
As you steal my coffee’s edge, and as we dance
In silence on our wedding day;
As August comes to bat, still one run down,
And as the runners take their two-out leads
I’ll stand up and resound the nervous cheers.

Braided Cord

We learned the lesson of the braided cord,
two strands strong, three unbreakable
according to scripture, the old testimonial
inspiration woven into our lives
     with romantic embellishment
     spun from a preacher’s words.

We kept an invitation from our wedding day
in a frame, hung it on our bedroom wall
as a daily reminder of the ongoing occasion,
which we enhanced with an inimitable piece
of that stranded cord not easily broken
     and lovingly spun: we invited, we wed,
     but it was you who framed, reminded, enhanced.

                                         We needed this cue
in our feeble youth, and in the sharpness of age
we need it still, something more to celebrate
than fading photographs and anniversaries
     and this is true: my need is yours,
     your need is ours, what time will never fade.

The snapshots are in boxes, the memories
are gathering dust, but the braided truth remains.

12:30

“...and with all your strength...”

My heart is heavy: if heaviness were
     a bundle I would set it down and leave
it on the roadside bloody there to throb
     and die alone.  Then newly spirited I
by the substitute beat of wings would learn to fly
     and rise to heaven all heaviness defied,
          by invisible will of winds sustained
     and carried, no more burdens to abide.

But let my heart beat on inseparable, strong
     against the grievous push of reality,
          steady as the ground on which I stand,
     constantly attending, the sergeant’s song
at the center of my march to victory
             and the core of my pain.

My soul is sad: and if it were a rope
     around my neck I would struggle to untie
the knots of my existence, to escape
     the tangles of my personhood, to be
unfettered from my sorrows, free at last:
     viva la dolce vita joie de vivre
          translated to the gates of God
     and welcomed in, all weariness relieved.

But let my soul run certainty within
      the intricate schematic of my veins,
          cause of all effect, the unseen force
      of every muscle’s movement, every wind
and spark and charge, the rattle in my chains
               and the source of my sadness.

My mind is numb: if heaven is a dream
     unproven, laughable, a fool’s goal I
          must dream it and believe it anyway:
     upon these wings imagined life becomes
more bearable, the suffering recedes;
     but prove there is no heaven, clip my dreams
          and pain abounds and weighs me down;
     my heart becomes a heavy ticking bomb;
my soul starts strangling me.

                                        But let it be:
      let my heart beat on, my soul remain within
to stubbornly endure; let time instruct
     the vital weave of heaviness and heaven
and let me learn how pain is not a parcel
               to reject or a cord to be cut.