March 7

Measures taken for my comfort are way beyond the norm.
My sofa is commodious, my blanket snug and warm.
I’ve opened up the damper and lit a cheerful fire.
The coffee table’s covered with things I might desire:
snacks both sweet and savory, a small flask of gin,
bottles of iced tonic for me to put it in,
magazines and books on tape installed upon my phone.
I’ll barely have to stir now that I’m left alone.

Yet, all these creature comforts won’t make up for a world
where there is not another loving body curled
at the sofa’s other end. Perfection is perverse
when I have not another with whom I may converse.
The hottest fire is lukewarm, though it may crack and spark.
Its brightest flame does nothing to dispel the dark.
I’ve been more years without you now than those we spent together.
I’ve built a life and learned to live without a secure tether.

Other loves fill in a part of what you took away,
and yet when I remember, on this our wedding day,
how you might have been here had fate not removed you,
I wonder if this new life we had planned would have behooved you.
What life takes away it fills in with other pleasures.
It does no good to rail against all those severe measures
it takes to move us on into new lives that we choose
to compensate for all the old loves that we lose.

Exactly 34 years ago, we chose to follow heart.
Then 15 years later, our pathways split apart.
You began your new adventure, though not the one we’d planned,
while only I pursued our dream in this foreign land.
Though anniversaries weren’t our thing, a friend thinks to remind me,
and for once our wedding date I cannot put behind me.

Please click on photos to enlarge them.

For all but one of our 15 years together, Bob and I forgot our anniversary and on the one year we celebrated it, we later found out we’d celebrated it on the wrong day. I’ve told of this before, and this year, as usual, I would have forgotten it if Forgottenman (ironically) had not reminded me that it was Bob’s and my wedding anniversary date. Somehow, that reminder and the prompt words led to this poem being written. And, I had to light a little candle at a shrine constructed to commemorate our wedding day. The plans to move to Mexico, by the way, were mutual ones. Sadly, Bob passed away before we could move into the house we had purchased there. This is the house I’ve lived in for the past 20 years.

Prompt words today are blanket, article, lukewarm, commodious and world. And for dVerse Poets Open Link Night