MARY ANNE’S ON ANY ANNIVERSARY

Remember Canada?

We pooled

our dollars and we went,

relying only on each other

and a car that had its problems.

Since then our counterpoints

persist.

I hate fast

and love slow while you’re

the opposite.

I’m Centigrade.

You’re Fahrenheit.

I throw away.

You treasure.

I hear the words

and trace the silhouettes.

You learn

the rhythm and enjoy the colors.

If every day’s the picnic

after Adam’s dream, we’re picnickers.

En route to anywhere, we bicker

as we go but come home

happy.

What bonds us then?

A love of figure-skating,

manners, courage, and the poetry

of being kind?

Or just

that difference makes no

difference to the heart.

Confirmed

by how we faced three deaths

together and a birth that answered

everything, we’re sure of nothing

but the going on.

We take

our chances like Freud’s “group

of two” whose only books are stars

and waves and what the wind

is doing…

Queen of the right

word and when it should be

said, I love you for the way

you keep surprising me by being

you.

Who else could whisper

through the pentothal before

your surgery, “If anything goes

wrong, take care of Sam.”

Then to prove the woman in you

never sleeps, you added, “How

do I look?”

Darling, no wonder

every child and flower opens up

to you.

You can’t be unreceiving

or deceiving if you want to,

and you’ve yet to want to.

That’s your mystery.

If “love

plus desperation equals poetry,”

then love plus mystery is all

the desperation I deserve to learn.

On cold nights or warm

I’ll turn and tell you this,

not loud enough to wake you,

but in secret, softly, like a kiss.

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