Many years have come and gone since we held hands and walked,
Along the shore, bare feet on sand, and of the future talked,
Of days when we would marry, of days when we would be
The parents of a cherished child, of our eternity.

Life has not always been kind, to us, 'twixt then and now,
And though I'm oft preoccupied I've n'er forgotten how,
We walked  a beach, and gathered shells, and spoke of things to come,
How at your glance, or touch, or sigh, my heart would surely drum.

The pages of our love may yellow, our rose may wither dry,
As youth becomes a memory, and older age is nigh,
But the essence of that joy remains, though it may hide from sight,
My heart still holds a light for you, and it still burns as bright

As the day you first took my hand and we strolled by the sea.
You are now as you were then, the only girl for me.
And so my love, old age will come, and work on us its art,
But that one thing will never change, you're always in my heart.

And so I hope our lives stretch long into our golden years,
Through stages in our daughter's life as each new one appears,
For there are other beaches, and rippled lengths of sand,
That I would like to walk with you, together, hand in hand...

Happy sixteenth anniversary, honey.

Love you,

--C

This morning I received a question from a poet who was trying to implement ULev-style collapsible sidebars on her blog. While tooling about on her blog I found the beginnings of a collection of butterfly-related poetry. I like butterflies, poetry, and especially poems about flight (as you all know considering the many poems I have written about birds). One of the blogger's poems caught my eye...   more »

Here's an odd idea. I heard a guy discussing this on WBUR's On Point today: you go to Google and type in a phrase in quotes like "Last night I dreamt" or "When I grow old" or "Now I realize that", then with the resulting excerpts from websites that google returns, try to string the matching lines together into a poem...   more »

What moves the meager poet's hand
To take up pen and scrawl...   more »

My friend Brian and I had a friendly disagreement about haiku today.  I'd call it a gentlemen's disagreement if I didn't think Brian would look over his shoulder and say "who walked in?"    As the title suggests, the question was: can haiku rhyme? Brian felt that if it rhymes it's not haiku, and I felt otherwise...   more »

The day is passed, the sun is setting,
And at last, it's time I'm getting
Home, to family's embracing ...   more »

Well, you can tell by the limp that's in my walk,
I been shovelin'--my driveway's blocked.
Blower's loud and snow ain't warm,
I've been chucking snow since I was born...   more »