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.

Couple Walking in the Forest (Van Gogh), Sonnet #272

For Ruth

We call them our "woods walks," as though the trees

Walk with us; one follows, one leads -- each sees

Us, seldom hand in hand because the light,

Leaf-filtered, tinted, already binds us,

And should we ever become lost, finds us.

We're tall oaks branching each other's delight.

You say you always find here perfect calm.

I feel it too, my love, I feel through you.

In a leaf, I see tracings of your palm,

Read our future, not real, perhaps, but true.

Sometimes you walk ahead and look for birds,

The screech owl (unicorn!) in its knothole,

Never yet seen, though you search every bole,

Your face a lovely sonnet without words.

Posted on our 38th wedding anniversary.