From Publius
To Terra

Salve amore mea

I bid you greetings from the new land
Though I am saddened by your absence
It is a necessary grief

Think not on the sweaty tasks unsuitable
For a beauty such as you
A house you deserve
A house I shall build

A grand atrium will await your arrival
Flowers and Garland will be strewn
To parade your coming

The triumphant wife
Whose radiant reflection shines as a goddess
Mine impluvium turned caldarium

Enter further and I'll have built for you
A grand hallway
Paved with mosaic representations of great Jove
And pastoral murals of our farm and ****** Ceres

Finally, I'll show you to your bed chamber
Finely furnished for the royalty of my love
Crowned in soaring arches crossed in such a way
That creates perfect cubes painted with dancing Cupid
Whose bow I've aimed to forever seal your heart

To mine own

When I draw the arrow
Feathers knocked to sunburned cheeks
And let loose my desire to hold you close
And erase the distance of space between
Our farm
And your home

All I've left to do is build and till and sow
May Sol, Luna, and yourself
Watch over me from afar
With love and well wishes

I will write you soon with more tales from the field
Until then, the work continues...

Vale amore mea,

PERTINAX

Short daddy-longlegs
Crawling up the empty wall,
How's the wife and kids?

It has been three Tuesdays since I lost you.
I will never forget seeing you, just lying there.
I went to our regular coffee shop, at the regular time.
For the second week in a row I ordered both our drinks.

It has been nine Saturdays since I lost you.
The drugstore called yesterday and said your medicine needed to be picked up.
I picked it up.

It has been seven episodes of that show you like, since I lost you.
Most of the things on the DVR are yours.
I’m just not ready to delete them. It’s the little things.
I don’t think I can just yet.

It is the first Thanksgiving since I lost you.
Dinner at my parents was nice, but no one mentioned you.
I canceled Christmas with your parents.
They said they understood.

It has been twenty-two Sunday walks in the park since I lost you.
More than once, my friends told me it is time to pick up and move on.
What is so important about moving on? I lost someone I love.

It has been dozens of mornings waking up and not seeing you asleep.
You are more than someone I wanted to spend my life with.
You were a comfort, a constant, a habit.

It has been five months since I have heard you tell me you love me,
and the memory is starting to fade. I can’t lose it too.

It has been one hundred seventy-four days, sixteen hours, and twenty-one minutes since I lost you.
To him.

Looking on the past year,
I couldn't change a thing,
Throughout all the fights and arguments I would call here,
It also brought forth joy like a warm note on a nylon guitar string.

I saw my sons birth,
Where he held my finger in that operating room,
Where the strength of this newborn titan laid me low,
Tears of joy springing unburden to my eye,
Carrying me to a great height I never knew before.

I got to see him take his first steps,
Hear his first word,
And see all the other firsts along the way.

Every one worth the trials of life,
Working to support us,
Put myself through college,
Waking at 4,
Coming home at 8,
And sleeping at 12,
Working for 15.30,
And slogging hard for 2.

You were mad at my doggedness,
Angry at ignoring myself,
I know I waylaid my own needs too much,
Put too much on my own shoulders,
And sometimes I still do.

I promised you the world,
And I can like to think I can at least give you the parts of it you want.

Only now do I realize that the parts in question are not as big as I once thought.

I see you there,
My sweet warm spring rain,
Coming 'round that worn & weathered bend again,
My sweetness,
My Queen.

Glimpses of you,
Carried upon warm gusts,
Through the torrent of winter sleet,
Tempered by grace and kindness,
Making me see that sweet morning dew once again.

Making my head swim,
Sweat breaking from my brow,
Rivulets caused by the intensity of your love,
Matching any summer haze.

You carry forth a great message,
Of coming life in blooms,
Rather then heralding Fall's doom and impending gloom.

So sing to me my May Queen,
With your soft words of gentle wood,
The sounds of supreme love and understanding,
Calling forth in me everything good.

I never could've known the life we'd have
When we were young and drunk on discovery.

When you walked into my life like light flooding a room,
I never could've imagined what we'd build together.

As I hold the children you gave me in my arms,
The culmination of our intertwined hearts,
I feel so rich and full and satisfied.

I didn't know then, but I know now, just how beautiful it is to open your heart to another.

Nicky, the neighbor’s dog, drags a road **** home.
A beautiful pelt like those fox shoulder garments women wore in the
      forties.
But the head is crushed beyond recognition—maybe it’s a fox and that’s
      why Nicky, a canine, is conducting this wake on our front lawn.

Loretta, my wife’s mother, is in the hospital again. Forty years of Crohn’s
      disease has finally broken her.
It may take some time but she won’t bounce back from this episode.
None of us are sorry to see her die, not even Loretta. There will be a
      thunderous downpour during her last hour.

I like the story about the nuns hitting Peg in school–contumacy is a sin.
Emile and Loretta considered it an inappropriate punishment for their
      cherished adopted daughter.
So they pulled her out of Catholic for public school. They did their own
      thinking about discipline.

Early Spring, peepers all night, then the birds take over at dawn.
      Soothing—the mourning doves.
During this half of the year, May through October, we live in a green
      bower.
We turn the house inside out, move into the mountains.

In their annual order, flowers appear in the understory: coltsfoot, hepatica
      and trillium through to the end, late purple aster, spotted joe pye and
      pearly everlasting.
We let Nicky nurse her road ****, watch over it, roll around on it.
Don’t let go of the steering wheel while driving fast in the passing lane.