Precious Metals

It’s almost a month since our 25th wedding anniversary. Real life reclaimed us all too quickly after a wonderful two days in Torrevieja where we retook our vows, witnessed by our children and Marianne’s sister, Cathrine. Torrevieja – because Helge, the priest who married us, christened our four children, and blessed us on our 10th anniversary, now lives out there with his wife, Solveig. He is a truly holy man, and she is the perfect foil to his spirituality. We could celebrate with none other than them. They are part of our family, this family.

And this is the poem I wrote for Marianne for that anniversary. Though, typical of me, I didn’t get it together in my head and on paper until we’d been back for a couple of days.

Precious Metals

I dreamed
For almost thirty years
Of being loved,
Spent my childhood reading
Women’s magazines
And their romances,
But never found any,
Never found the truth I needed.

That sudden day when I noticed
Your eyes,
No brighter colour ever,
And that unexpected night,
Nothing ever lighter than then,
Your perfume on my pillow
In the emptinesses you left,
Those secret trips,
And then the question,
At the second time of asking.

That day in May,
Twenty-five years ago,
My made-up words that are now
Other people’s memories,
Venice, cats, smoothness,
And black and white pictures
In the hotel by Lake Como.

Children, the everyday, flashes
Of elation, pride, yelling,
Nights in each other’s arms,
Illness, pain, recovery, and relieved tears;
They bring us to now.

All those years have been silver.
These years to come are more precious than metals,
More expensive than time and treasures,
And they are ours forever.

Richard, 28th May 2016

By the way, for the sake of completeness, you should know that Helge is one of only two people to keep their real names in Dead Men.