For Ruth on Our 40th Wedding Anniversary, 11/27/77
I bought this for your 21st birthday
In September 1975.
It was just one slender emerald stem —
Our wedding still two years, two months away.
Not only did your care keep it alive,
There are now more than a dozen of them
Inside our home, grown as big as the first,
And yet more — all cut from the mother tree —
We’ve given to our friends and family.
They need little water and do not thirst
For much but light — yours and that of the sun.
The plant has spines more hurtful than a rose,
But I’ve never been pierced by one of those.
So much life, love. You are the only one.
