Last night, a halo around the moon.
This morning, white stars on the window,
The boxwood, the sheet
The sun hangs through the trees
To shine, to shine with iridescence.
It's going to snow you said,
You felt it in your bones, forty-
Year-old bones I have known
For more than half that time.
Did we know, when we married
We would be together this long?
We did not even imagine children,
Prosperity, both of us being alive
After two decades together.
That November night we said I do, was there
A circle around the moon,
A sky filled with stars
We would later view through the telescope
And say to each other "Oh, isn't that beautiful?"
I take your clothes out of the basket
And hang them in your closet.
You gaze out the window, the weather forecaster
Who feels compelled to predict what is coming: rings
Around the moon, rings around our fingers -
Who could know
That day we vowed to love one another
Forever, that we would.

© by Sherry Hughes Beasley.
Used with the author's permission.