Last night, thumbing through our wedding
album, we named those death has taken
in the quarter-century since we were married.
A crow-silhouette of melancholy
shuttled across memory’s lit space.

Remembering that luminous October
day, to which their living spirits brought
their best gift, their quick gift of presence,
may we see them always as they were then,
fully fleshed in the life that carried them.

Their light still suffuses our inner sky.
Years shine in us like a gold ring
where birds of love, their wings of sun
and shadow, join in flight, circle and
circle, without end, without beginning.