Happy Anniversary my love.

                The Color of Shade

          My love
Will you stay a minute longer--
With your hand at rest,
Your fingers arced and striped with sun
          The slightest touch on crumpled sheet.

          Will you stay--
While the lavender shadows of willow leaves
Shudder ever so slightly
          on the yellow sunlit blind?
Can you hear the cat's careful steps along the sill?
And listen for the clock
And for the sputter and drone
          of the housefly worrying the rusted screen,
Or the click of hairline cracks in ice
          left melting in the glass
Or the dull adjustment
          of the dog's heavy head upon his paws?

Or the throb and thrum--
          the very weight of silence
          plodding round these gold rooms?

Won't you shut your eyes again
To feel the slanting light across their lids--
To feel the lazy heft of this misplaced afternoon?

          Won't you wait
And frame these lost minutes
Like lonesome polaroids left curling in a box?
Stay your hectic plans
                    and wait
For the sun to finish slipping down the wall
For the scent just at evening's edge
For the color of shade.