For Ruth

Though we missed our daughters up in Michigan, it was lovely to spend eleven days alone with my wife Ruth Diamond-Guerin. This is by way of love and appreciation.

For Ruth

Is there just one universe?

There the stars and here the cafe.

Hidden lights illuminate the tables.

The various darknesses immerse

Men and stars in dissolving clay.

Are both god and science fables?

The universes are infinite,

They say, and time does not exist.

But here we are and there the stars.

The air is full of perfume and wit,

And a wine too ancient to resist.

All else is beyond, late and far.

Let's nibble galaxies and swallow suns.

I'll count my hours with you by ones.

Euphorbia (African Milk Stripe Plant), Sonnet #380

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.

Bond of Union (Escher), Sonnet #315

For Ruth

They say that only gravity can make an orb,
That when two pliable objects come together,
An attracting force at their centers will absorb
All imbalance, all turbulence, wind and weather,
And even out the distance from center to rim
To form a satisfying equilibrium.
The loves of men and women are beribboned air,
Much that's empty and much almost decorated.
It's up to each to seek the beautiful and fair,
To smile, to look past the moment, sad or sated
(Though we'd wrestle the sun if it would hold the day!),
When the moment is over and has rolled away.
My love, our ribbons tighten and, like gravity,
Have made a single perfectly round you and me.

Tiger Lilies, Sonnet #304

For Ruth

They lined the country roads in Illinois.
Great banks of red-orange blossoms, green stems,
And pale pink tubes waiting to splay open --
Our courting flower, this remembered joy.
I drove those roads to see you most weekends
In the battered Mustang I had back then.
Fifty miles of lily-lined road before
I reached the highway, with fifty miles more,
Until I kissed your lips and took your hands,
And walked with you on Lake Michigan sands.
Now the lilies open every July
In our back yard, and up and down the street.
They are one answer to our loving's "why."
Their scent is faint, but unearthily sweet.

Note: The spelling of "unearthily" is not
strictly speaking correct; I'm combining
"earthy" with "unearthly."

Sundial (Escher), Sonnet #246

The motionless gnomon slowly persists,
Pointing the hour in pinching the sun's rays,
While hands of a clock clench their tiny fists,
And sheets of squared paper reckon the days.
A clock can't tick in space, though comets pass,
Light doesn't exist until it falls upon
A planet, your eyes, or a cloud of gas.
Thus, a love is engendered by the sun.
Ruth, our days number some 15,000,
And more than 400,000 the hours.
Let's not waste a moment counting the sand.
What's left us is unknowable, but ours.
I will stand still, watch you encircle me --
No shadows, just the light of your beauty.