The Soldier's Widow After 47 Years

On Memorial Day, I remember my love, my Marine.

Sometimes you get up and look out your window and the morning says, “This is love.”

You scoff at that bright sky, for you’ve told yourself that true love has never come near you. Clouds scud by, the breeze laughs

and here’s a scrub jay to relieve you of your common sense.

Doesn’t everyone search and search for what you think is yours?

It dies again and again, moldering in the winter of discontent,

waiting for what, really, save a sense of plenty,

a dearth of bumps in the night?

Your gamble of tomorrow, tomorrow

looks a certain way but somehow the mirror darkens

as you plod through dry empty days and

never notice the rare painted bunting sitting on your own backyard wire.

In its flaming color, it sings, this bird that isn’t supposed to be here, warning you.

Just what you seek has never been present, always skips ahead to the end of your dreams.

The jay screeches and you wake and

the bunting was only a mirage.

Did you never see the warmth of embers in your own tinderbox?

That gift, yours all along, stood ready all those years,

a steadfast soldier,

calling you silly names while you moped about what you thought you lacked.

Memory is left for you to know how love

brushed past you, cherished you really.

Morning fades, the jay keeps up the racket

and steam rises from the fence tops.

Yes, you were loved, you say.

All that time, you were loved