Family Photos

Valentine's Day

Once again this Valentine's Day

you gave me roses, chocolate

and sentimental cards,

as if I were still twenty.

Yet now your dear hands

are gnarled and discolored

and the voice that says, "I love you,"

is garbled and slurred.

On those long ago afternoons

when the world was sublit

with the wonder of love discovered,

we luxuriated in our bodies,

running together along the trail

traced by waves slipping up the sand,

I did not foresee this day long hence,

when our rows and rifts,

our tiffs and tempers,

would lie scattered behind us

like driftwood on the dunes,

and the sky would darken

to reveal the secrets of the cosmos,

constellations piercing through the heavens

and revelatory shooting stars.

Now as your soft flesh

melts from your bony frame,

I can see with astonished clarity

the blinding light it had concealed,

and once again, 

my immeasurably precious darling,

love is blind.