She Is My World

I would have liked
to give her the world,
and, believe me,
she would have liked that too,
but I owned so little of it,
so all she’d receive
was a homemade valentine,
not even capitalized,
and, one year, some patchouli oil,
another, some seeds
from a Burpee catalog.

Those seeds were for Cosmos,
and I really don’t like them much,
but she does, and
that’s enough,
like those $3.99 Driscoll strawberries,
the ones she prefers,
when all I eat are
the $1.50 baskets,
with unmemorable names,
the loss leaders from the chains.

I own more of the world now,
but I’m older and wiser too,
know that it’s not mine to give,
and what’s it matter, anyhow?
In the way of men and women
of a certain age, of
husbands and wives
of all ages,
if I need a new tee shirt, I buy one,
while she has the world
in her catalogs.
Then there’s Ebay,
but don’t get me started.