0Forty years together you have loved,
Opening a door to love for me.
Romantic hearts bequeath a harmony
That proves more rich than any life might prove.
Years pour like water rapidly downstream,
Yielding harvests gleaned in fields to come,
Each waiting for the heart to bring it home,
Accumulating in an undreamt dream.
Rejoice, then, in a beauty never gone,
Sustained by songs more sweet because passed on.
+1For a year now we’ve been living together
In something less than marriage, more than friends,
Reasonably happy with each other,
Satisfied to serve our separate ends.
There are no promises, nor should there be,
As we pursue our passions day by day,
Needing only love, which we agree
Need not be guaranteed in any way.
In such a case, there is a case for giving
Very little, just enough to keep
Each even with the common cost of living,
Relating what we sow to what we reap.
So does love die, for love loves not the measure
Allocating carefully its treasure.
Reason may with reason count the cost,
Yet love that is not generous is lost.
+1Fifty years together is a mountain
In truth not all of us would wish to climb.
For umpteen thousand days . . . but, well, who’s countin’?
The two of you have trudged up this incline.
Yet what you see up there must be sublime.
Your love has shaped your lives much as the weather
Erodes the Earth into majestic forms.
A half a century of life together
Reveals the rock beneath the mountain heather,
Splendidly unmoved by passing storms.
0Happy Tenth! A milestone that seems
As natural as stones upon a hill,
Placed by wind and rain and swollen streams
Plunging down to work their wayward will.
Yet our will alone has placed this stele
That stands amid the wilderness of time,
Each choosing each each day that we might feel
Nearer to a grace we can’t define.
The loves that last are cultivated flowers:
Half pure mystery, half purely ours.
0Happy second anniversary!
As time wears on, the newness wears away;
Passion turns to pleasurable play;
Preference becomes necessity.
Years are markers towards a transformation
Slow and unobtrusive as a tide
Elevating vessels side by side,
Changing both, but ever in relation.
On this, your second, then, may you rejoice,
Nestled in the chamber of your choice,
Destined by your love for celebration.
0Happy anniversary, my darling!
All I am is yours, as you are mine.
Perhaps the years erode the boundary line;
Perhaps the fortune fades into the feeling.
Yet we are will, though often not quite willing,
As this year’s choice becomes the next year’s wine.
Nor without love could we endure the time
Needed to bestow so great a blessing.
In choosing love, unburdening desire,
Viewing passion as a gift to give,
Embracing as we long to be embraced,
Remaining where we would someone remain:
So do we tend both equally the fire
As each becomes the one one needs to live,
Replacing what can never be replaced,
Yearning for what comes again, again.
0Happy Anniversary!
After many years
Pleasure is a golden hillside,
Passionate and still.
Your bedrooms and your hands are free,
After unshed tears;
Now much of life is tucked away,
No longer touched by will.
In your hearts a wilderness,
Vast and undisturbed,
Empty of all sentiments
Renews the moment’s glory.
So may years of tenderness,
Also sung unheard,
Radiant beyond all sense
Yet tell love’s ancient story.
