Love always makes us a little nutty, and that’s not a complaint.
After all, it’s the only explanation for how I’ve managed to be so loved all of my life!
One could do a whole lot worse than beginning and ending with love.
To my beloved husband with great love and affection on our eighteenth anniversary: you continue to surprise me, all of these years after your initial unexpected appearance as the love of my life!
At evening, summertime holds breathless sway
When even crickets wait before they’ll sing,
And birds to roost go silent; everything
Takes pause because the lengthy heat of day
Has drawn a shawl of stillness down to lawn
And flowerbed and hedges, ’til a breath—
So shallow it could scarcely ward off death—
Is difficult to breathe ’til the break’s gone,
Until the night resumes its stealthy crawl,
Exhaling with a stirring wind that flies
Up, stirring blossoms upward to the skies,
Their petals dropping, ash-like, down the wall,
Crape-myrtle petals drifting down below
What’s the current market value of a hug, caress or kiss?
Why would any self-respecting person get engrossed in this?
Isn’t it a tad surprising we’d make such hullabaloo
Of this silly, unproductive, non-remunerative goo?
That’s the miracle of romance and of loving: that we choose
To pursue ridiculous intangibles among the ooze
Of lace valentines and candies, in hand-holding, making eyes
Like moo-cows and fuzzy puppies at each other—but the prize
Found in all this crazy weirdness, wacky though our loving be,
Is the exponential return on this small investment that we see
When beloved turns to lover and responds in foolish kind:
That’s the truth toward which we hover when two loves get so entwined.