Anniversary

Almost forty years; cannot
recollect to say the date exactly
when we met, but here and now
the place and time remains as
clear in mind as yesterday

the change it wrought sustains a
knowledge new to solitary thought
to be precise I never knew a time
without the meeting of your mind
and mine that meant a damn

– like how it doesn’t pay to count
the days secured as lessons learned
clearly you have changed the matrix
of our lives in ways which earned
a permanence and rite of place

and when I ponder how and why
I am amazed and quite surprised
the little that I really know of you –
you are the same yet not the
one I met those years ago

it is a mystery benign – enclosed
in enigmatic folds and wraps of
secrecy which holds the hand
of fate and fuels familiar furnaces
which welcome love’s dictate
© 14 June 2008, I. D. Carswell

For Anita – on Anniversary 39