A poem

After Anne’s funeral I was looking through her stuff and I found a sheet of paper tucked in the pocket of her laptop bag. The laptop and bag were new, only a year old, but I had not seen this particular piece of paper in more than forty years. I was stunned to see it, surprised and moved that she had kept it close for all those years. It was a poem that I wrote for her in, it must have been, late 1973 when we were both twenty-one years old. We had been together for only a few months.

The room is rich with memories of my love
Sweet odours of her skin upon my body
The posters her friend gave her pinned above
the bed, her nightdress tossed in shoddy
fashion across the chair as she rushed out
to work, and on the table there are still
the breakfast’s dirty dishes, and no doubt
it is some hours now since she went into the chill
morning air, having kissed me goodbye
and I have lain here since then in her bed,
her face alive in my half-sleeping eye
have lain with thoughts of her going through my head. 
When I’m with her I’m living with each nerve
Such love and joy I don’t think I deserve.

The love and joy continued, the living with each nerve, for the next forty six years. I miss her terribly.