Our second night together In not too many years Our love, so long enduring, So chaste and pure unless you count The thousand or so lascivious thoughts Coursing through my mind: O! to wake up more entangled Than entranced! But a treasure Such as ours is not so lightly Changed, and what pure bliss To wake to coffee, to walk, to dream, To reminisce of all those times When we stumbled, fell, Gave our hearts for breaking, Tortured our minds with questing, Laughed with sorrow, cried with joy, And we were here, each other, For each other, loving each other, Offering our arms in hugs That say it’s okay that we Don’t always understand. You, so tolerant of my mistakes, Must see in me something like The wisdom, beauty, courage that I see In you for each of one thousand five hundred Days and two nights. Can I -- dare I try? -- to fill a part of The “If I’m so wonderful...” empty Spaces over which you give lament? Dare I say what you might not believe, That you are still -- have always been -- My picture of not quite perfection? There still aren’t words, even in This “Precise, Extra-Fine” pen to Say what I have tried to know For fourteen hundred ninety eight Of fifteen hundred nights. In my dreams, I finally work it out On a porch, in an old rocker, By your side in the twilight -- But by then I have no empty space, And it need not be said.
— Ron – 08 Jul 1993