O let me be your currant, honey-bun,

O crispy bacon, wrap around this prune,

Drying tomato, let me be your sun;

O veggie-burger, let me be your bean,

O honey, let me be the way you run,

O salad-dressing, let me be your green -

O Valentine, please let me be the one.

and Juliet need rest

but I, because my Love is You,

am singularly blest.

One much beloved Vakentine

who I love equal-best

holds fast my hand as we decline

toward that final West.

The other, equally adored,

and not yet twenty-one,

has all the bloom that youth afford

and appetite for fun.

Though time our bodies undermines

and one day we must part

it cannot touch the Valentines

I hold within my heart.

the flatulence of yesterday

hands crossed upon my chest, and muse

on anything I care to choose

unless, preoccupied, I find

I muse upon what’s on my mind.

*

The goodnight chat and morning kiss

contribute much to married bliss:

where once was giddy passion, now

through heart to heart and brow to brow

we two increasingly contrive

to keep intimacy alive.

*

For you and I and you and me

on fundamentals all agree

and correspond in all but such

as profits brain and pleases touch:

I offer thanks near every night

that you are perfect (almost) (quite).

nothing else matters, that

so long as we have this the world

can destruct, should destruct, and

later, when it has,

though not as we imagined,

holds us together like memory

or the imperceptible attraction

across the galaxies from

proton to neutron?

Why should pleasing someone else

be so important, what purpose

does it serve, this incompleteness,

how does it help? Is it

accidental as mathematics?

Silly me. To ask such

things. And yet, there is something

comforting in a question that

cannot be answered, like the wind,

and your hair in my hand.

Only one way to celebrate, of course,

my love, our first four seasons of friendship -

all our events and anniversaries:

Christmas, Valentine’s Day, the first time

we made love, the passing of a much loved

old cat – this one a Sestina for you.

That April evening, when sat next to you,

I first touched you – or you me – set a course

to where we are both lovers and are loved

with an affection that grew from friendship

nursed by determination, fed by time,

towards the light of anniversaries.

And (without which no anniversaries
for us, I think) desire: my own for you
quickly declared and yours in slower time;
we found – find – such delight in intercourse
it seemed only natural that friendship
led to intimacy. But to be loved……

It isn’t any small thing to be loved:

I wasn’t seeking anniversaries

(not consciously, that is) but knew friendship

though satisfying, not enough. Then you

prescribed for me this regimen, this course

your specialty, researched a long time,

which you’d perfect, if only there were time

unlimited. Imperfect, and much loved:

while Earth runs her next less than certain course

around the sun, let anniversaries

be high in our priorities; let you

and I determine to nurture friendship.

To find the best way to nurture friendship

we only need luck and a little time

in which we can research faithfulness. You

have been, may be still, variously loved:

we both have many anniversaries

feeding this river’s yet uncharted course

sweeping us on this course of friendship

through anniversaries that star our time

with loved moments, and all of them are you.