SOME SECRET GARDEN

  

To us the winter’s end is signified

By Hylas croaking from the budding trees,

Their song like sleigh bells, after having climbed

From hibernation underneath the leaves

And broken branches toward the sunny heights,

Their vocal sacs swelled up with evening air.

Their chorus chants of such romantic nights

As you and I remember, when our care

Was for some secret garden and embrace,

Where what we took to be our hearts and minds

Succumbed to Nature and pursued a trace

Of fleeting passion as we pulsed through time.

We dreamed it in the ice of our repose,

Our sleigh bells frozen underneath the snow.

 

CREME-FILLED DONUTS

  

Did you and I finally

have a truce when we ate

the last two creme-filled donuts?

 

Or was it a moment’s relapse,

into what we thought we knew

before we thought we knew each other?

 

Our little chat alone,

with an empty box between us,

at a crumb-sprinkled table in the lunchroom.

 

How long will the taste

of those pastries be with us,

once our tongues are free to disagree?

 ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL DAY

  

He read her diary after she passed on,

Her name recorded in the Book of Life,

And started writing where she had left off.

 

He wrote what had occurred from day to day,

As though she too were reading, starting with

“Another beautiful day”—her usual words,

Regardless of the weather.

                                           He would note

The visits from the children or from friends,

The gossip from the church, or little things

Only they two might know; for sixty years

Of married life beholds a world to share

In every mundane scene.

                                        He wrote, “Today,

The daffodils are nodding in the yard.

My darling, they are blooming just for you.”