A Life's Aspirations

 Written for Emily in October 2009 and found tucked in the pages of Love Dare just this week.

To grow old and wrinkled and gray, 

To have bones and joints that ache,

To move slowly methodically through each day.

To have eyes that have trouble seeing,

To have ears that strain to hear,

To have a memory that sometimes fades,

OH! To be old and weathered and dreaming...

But oh, the perfection, the ultimate completion;

to reach for you from the depths of my slumber

and to feel and hold and breathe in--

your warm and naked body--

to pull you into me--like an old puzzle piece

                             --like the shores to the ocean

To feel our lifetime pulse through me through us

Oh Emily, my wife, my companion, my lover

I cannot wait to grow old with you