8 Anniversary poems

Full many an anniversary has come to thee and me, heartbreaking days have come with tears, and happy days, with joy and glee.

Periyar Nature Preserve There is no crumbly frozen cake to thaw. Today, we are in the jungle. I mean mosquito. I mean tigers and elephants sludging their way to the lake for a drink and Don’t make sudden moves or snakes startled from an afternoon nap will greet you fang first. I think we are lost. Too hot for any cold confection to survive. Even my tube of sunblock is as warm as a baby’s bottle. You get to those places I can’t reach, those places I dared not even whisper before I walked down the aisle in white. You never worried if our families would clash, if they would clang like the clutch of pale monkeys clanging the thin branches of the treetrops, begging for our trail mix. You never worried about my relatives staring at your pale, muscled calves— things not usually seen outside of the bedroom. You wore hiking shorts anyway. And still, they lavished ladle-fuls of food on your plate. I think we are lost. My eyes are dark and wet as that wild deer that walked right past us, a little off the trail. I think we are lost, but for once I don't mind. Eventually you turn us back to a place not on any map, but I know I can trace it back with my finger if we ever need it again. We made it one year without a compass and we’re not about to start now.

for Don and Henrie Gordon Forty-odd years ago— Headlines in the snow— The jobless scrawled a text for mutineers; Then history seemed sane, Though Franco sailed for Spain And Hitler swore to live a thousand years. Now Progress, his machine, Makes water out of wine; With loaves and paper stuffs the multitude; For power he milks the sun To see the cities flame And drives the Goddess from the sacred wood. Yet anniversaries Should have our praise, as trees Salute the queenly coming of the Spring. All sacred marriages Keep evergreen in this: Coupling with Time, they bind him in a ring. Though time turns, history moves As if to prove our loves, Having no pattern but the one we give. While countries bleed and burn Not any shall sleep warm Unless, good friends, you teach us how to live. Some nine and forty years, A pulse-beat of the stars, Astounds the May Fly’s million generations. Your middle style of Time Is suited most to man. This whispering wrist sustains the dream of nations.

You are for me as you cannot be For yourself, chaos without demand To speak, the amethyst nothing Hidden inside the trinket shop’s stone, Dark eyes dark asterisks where light Footnotes a margin left blank. You Don’t look up to look up at the sky. Your ears parenthesize nothing That occurs, that I keep from occurring, In the poem, on the page, as you are For me, not a shadow, but a shade Whose darkness drops from no object But is itself yourself, a form of time Spanning nothing, never is your name.

I said you could snuggle. That doesn’t mean your cold feet all over my dick. Someone should teach you how to act in bed. What I think is you should keep your extremities to yourself. Look what you did— you made the cat move. But I didn’t want your hand there. I wanted your hand here. You should pay attention to my feet. You should picture them the next time you see a hot fifteen year old. Because there’s a lot more where those feet come from.

The big doll being broken and the sawdust fall all scattered by my shoes, not crying I sit in my dark to discover o failure annulled opens out in my hands a purse of golden salvaged sovereigns, from floors of seas culled. The dancing doll split in an anguish and all the cords of its elegant limbs unstrung; I stumble whistling; the bones of my skull marvelously start to sing, the whole shell of myself invents without peril and contains a court aubade. I hid the dovesmall doll but something found it. Frightened I gave the fire what was left. Surrounding, it mulled dulcet over the melting jeweled two blue eyes. That night our hearth was desolate, but then its stones sprung flowered and the soaring rafters arched. Now all the house laughs, the sun shouts out clearly: dawn! the sea owes us all its treasures; under the soft the riotous explosion of our waking kiss or gift, a stone plucked or shorn free of gravity falls upward for us, slow, and lies there, quietly.

Didn’t I stand there once, white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper, swearing I’d never go back? And hadn’t you kissed the rain from my mouth? And weren’t we gentle and awed and afraid, knowing we’d stepped from the room of desire into the further room of love? And wasn’t it sacred, the sweetness we licked from each other’s hands? And were we not lovely, then, were we not as lovely as thunder, and damp grass, and flame?

Eleven years today we ate at the same place we always go ordered the same things held hands across the table i love eleven years i love ordinary i love you every year including this one