Poem For My Wife's 60th Birthday

We met like survivors appearing out of the dust of a battle just ended.

I could barely see you, all scarred and wounded.

My hair had turned to mud.

We had fought for different kings

but we had survived the wars.  Now we serve the same king

and we are together.

Today you are sixty.  I know, that's a hard stone for a woman

to swallow.  You think you're done for.  It doesn't matter. 

In this kind of life, there is no beginning middle or end.

You are the same woman you've always been.

You think you don't work hard enough, but

you work way too hard.  Your bills are already paid, the important ones: mother, grandmother, partner.  You've given far beyond your heart's frontier.

Be sixty.  Be seventy.  If we get to eighty

we can walk together into the desert, beyond where the roads end.