the gift of years.

a poem for my 35th birthday

The gift of years.

Thirty-five journeys round the sun
on this beautiful spinning globe
of budding earth and swirling sea.
I have been, with you,
a part of the eternal dance
in this vast expanse
of unknown universes.

Here, on our little patch
of known time and space
each day is small, but holy
as we breathe together
this miracle of air,
and stare up together
at the impossibly wide
canvas of sky.

In my numbered days
I have felt deeply;
I have been swept up
in peels of laughter.
I have wept and pleaded and howled
with both delight and sorrow.
I’ve had my heart shattered,
and pieced the shards back together
again and again,
in the constant making
that is being alive.
Each year, each week, each moment,
we fumble to arrange the fragments
into something more beautiful
and somehow more whole.

This mosaic,
tenderly assembled
in the breaking and re-making,
is the lavish gift of years.