How Can I Count the Ways?

When grandson scrapes his leg on a barbed wire fence,

love smells like blood and alcohol and two Sponge Bob

bandages used to gently cover the cut and calm his fears.

When my sisters and I return from our mother's funeral,

loves sounds like the twenty-four cannonballs you make

into the neighbor's backyard pool and the squeal of

our children's laughter.

Love feels like crossing a marathon finish line

for the first time. Sore, exhausted, exquistely happy,

and seeing in your face the reality of a piggy-back ride

for each of the forty-one thousand two hundred and eight-six steps.

Love tastes like gumbo z'herbs and bread pudding prepared for

thirty-eight guests on the occasion of my fifty-fourth birthday.

After surgery, knowing we won't be able to have children together,

love is your one sweet, adoring, devoted face searching mine,

sharing my profound disappointment, whispering in my ear, your

children are my children. I don't love them because they're mine,

they're mine because I love them.

I could go on, listing all the ways I see, taste, hear, smell, and

feel your love, but I would be counting until the end of my days,

and I would rather spend them with you.