On the Five Year Anniversary of a Day Five Years Ago

When I met you I was —

I try to remember

the person who walked with

my face. Before there was

you, it was a different time

of day. The sun scattered in

other patterns through windows

on opposite sides of a house.

There are very nice pleasures

at dawn, a bright morning. Also

golden hours. And long evenings.

Here we are at the clear hour of

a blameless summer day.

We’ve already set our habits.

You’ve had your coffee, cooked

my breakfast. I stretched,

reached for a few kisses, and off

we step, palm to palm, down from

the front porch stoop, and into

our lives we choose

again and again.

Claiming Days as our Own, 2021

I tell everyone how

I share a birthday

with the Reverand Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Though we commemorate it

on a moving Monday.

I celebrate both.

I claim the whole month.

Country songs ask us

to live like we are dying.

Which we all are.

Our birthdays point out

someone changed their lives

rapidly, seismically, for ours.

My father-in-law loves to say

his birth marks an anniversary

of Mother Teresa’s, though it’s really

her baptism date, another kind of birth.

Now we have twins

starting their 3rd year

on their 2nd birthday,

the last day in February

on a non leap-year.

After the wildest two

years of our lives:

birth,

pandemic,

election,

marches,

and otherwise.