A Birthday Poem, For My Wife
Brandon Cook
Words are such wonderful things
Winging all around us
Giving us shapes to play in
To put our thoughts and hearts in
To make worlds that spin in infinity
How strange then
They can fail so fast
Falling, utterly helpless
Shrugging and sighing
Dropping the box they were carrying
And calling it a day
They’ve seen the writing on the wall,
Poor things
Set such a labor
They have no friends or well-dressed cousins
Could describe your air
The sunlight on your hair
The way you hold those you love
The way you grieve and weep and care
And return, always, with such hope
No, I can’t blame them
I join with them
I sit with them and sigh
And watch the long, slow slant of sunlight
Catch your silhouette
And marvel at how apt the silence lays
So still across the yard