Four different lettuces
To make a good salad
How many loves
To make a good life?
In youth
A passionate love
Importunate
Handsome
So irresistable
The wild heart sings.
A mid life love
Enlivened with children
A home
Glutted with work
A love to lean on
A solace
For arduous days
A man for laughing
Reading
Listening to music
Sharing friends
Walking the fragrant earth
With room for separateness
Personal quests
A mature love
Able to forgive
Misunderstandings
Fire edged anger
To tolerate imperfections.
A man who can revel
In golden hours together
Stolen from relentless time.
Can I count the ways
That have brought us
To our evensong?
I can never compass
The complex fabric of our sharing
Enabling us to endure
Life's violence
Now we two
Honed, tempered
For the eighth decade
Nearing the end
Implicit in our beginning
But never acknowledged
Give me your hand
Beloved
For the waning days
Of our life's adventure.
Four different lettuces
To make a good salad
One abounding love
To make a good life.