For our anniversary:

For our anniversary: A Poem in Want of a Metaphor
Working the garden, the weeds’ roots pop under my spade
and each year, I do my best to destroy them. 

I pull out chunks of them, 
Digging deeper to uncover a web of white tendrils

Spread deep beneath our garden and Midwestern though, 
veins cross the garden and grow into the yard. 

No matter what I do, the green shoots, 
each spring, stretch upward to whisper “I am here.”

***And a revision of the poem I wrote for our 5th Anniversary***

On our Anniversary

Sixty-one years grown into each other, 
chairs six inches apart the last time I saw them
my grandparents fingers intertwined
through the web of the hospital bed.

Sixty-one days at his side and quiet
and I reminded of linguistics – Mundell’s lecture
on context, a chart labeled words
spoken per day versus years married

The downward slope as silence
bloomed and words were replaced
by a glance, a lifted brow,
a throat clearing in the morning.

We’ve wasted words like air these past five years,
averaged sixty-one thousand or so as the context grows.
We’ve one-twelfth the time of my grandparents
As I weave my fingers into yours in silence.