World

 She Is My World

In those early days,

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,

thought I couldn’t afford 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, Amazon, all the rest,

but don’t get me started on those.