You’ve seen the trees relieved of leaves

in autumn’s great divide

there’s thirty years of these between

the time your small expanse was placed

upon my knees and I knew what

unconditional love was.

 

It’s hard to see the gleam

of fresh filled streams across

a desert where we walk not meeting

and there’s fire that flares sharp burns

each time we try to speak leaving marks

we can’t explain, a void that drops so deep

only sometimes feelings skirt around the bleakness.

 

There’s something you should know,

a first born child is special, comes not with ease

they tried to take you away, and now it seems to me

that battling through those years to keep you

has somehow been in vain, so here’s my offering

I can only write this way

 

to tell you just how much I love you.