I watch you try to remember things
From when we were just married, forty years ago.

Your eyes are peering far away to catch sight
Of the red pickup truck we took on our honeymoon
We were driving so fast, a blur of crimson
Yet we thought there was infinite time, infinite youth,
Driving in a straight line

When we brought our first-born home it was
Ten degrees below zero, remember?

You nearly died giving birth to our daughter
Later, she was the pitcher on the high school softball team.

In New Mexico the ponderosa pines smelled of butterscotch
My nose in the bark, I would describe it for you, you weren’t there.

We started at Pinkham Notch and climbed the Wildcats
We stopped climbing 17 years ago, when the disease showed up.

I help you fill out your Social Security form SSA-1
Your medicine is eight thousand dollars a month

We also went to Colonial Williamsburg.
We named the carriage horses Phil and Ed.

On the way home, in a little restaurant in the wilds of Ohio
All the customers stared at our shiny new rings.