March 26, 2006: 17 Snippets for 17 Years

17 Snippets for 17 Years

For Randy, with love and squalor on our 17th anniversary.

1.
You are my lighthouse. Ceaselessly
your rotations beam over the sea
and land. Birds are guided by them
and so are travelers lost in the
moors. You are my compass and light.
~James Laughlin

2.
All that I wanted then
is forgotten now, but you.
~Gary Snyder

3.
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep;
The more I give to thee
The more I have,
For both are infinite.
~ William Shakespeare

4.
You and I,
We were captured. We took our souls
And we flew away.
We were right; we were giving.
That’s how we kept what we gave away.
~Neil Young

5.
No easy thing to bear, the weight of sweetness.
Song, wisdom, sadness, joy: sweetness
Equals three of any of these gravities.
~Li-Young Lee

6.
here’s to opening and upward,to leaf and to sap
and to you (in my arms flowering so new)
self whose eyes smell of the sound of rain
~e.e. cummings

7.
What did you come here for today?
Did you have something you wanted to say?
Or did you just come to get a piece of paper,
And say “I do”?
Or did you come to tell everyone that
Love is forever, and ever, and ever
And a day.
~Gene Cotton

8
What makes your love
Choose me? Once I asked you
But you wouldn’t answer.
It was your secret. Keep it so.
~James Laughlin

9.
To get the full value of joy
You must have someone to divide it with.
~ Mark Twain

10.
I love you like the stars above,
I’ll love you ‘til I die.
~Dire Straits

11.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself
But if your love and must needs have desires,
Let these be your desires:
• To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
• To know the pain of too much tenderness.
• To be wounded by your own understanding of love and to bleed willingly and joyfully.
• To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
• To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
• To return home at eventide with gratitude and then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.
~ Kahlil Gibran

12.
And when we die, we say we’ll catch some blackbird’s wing,
And we will fly way together,
Come some sweet blue bonnet spring.
~Nanci Griffith

13.
and now you are and I am and we’re
a mystery which will never happened again,
a miracle which has never happened before.
~e.e. cummings

14.
Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not easily broken.
~Ecclesiastes 4:12

15.
My lover is radiant and ruddy,
Outstanding among ten thousand.
~Song of Songs 5:10

16.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace…
I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears of all my life! - and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
~Elizabeth Barrett Browning

17.
You were born together, and together you shall be
Forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings
Of death scatter your days.
You shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
~Kahlil Gibran