Though we didn’t really travel the entire world, my late husband and I visited many places in our 30 years together: Key West to Kyoto, The Great Barrier Reef to the Galapagos Islands, the Parthenon to the Coliseum.
Perhaps this poem I wrote for a wedding anniversary says it best:
Another—Anniversary Poem
That long, quiet drive to our elopement:
The nuptials saved when you said the very right
thing just as I was thinking mistake, turn back.
Our ceremony toasted with a watery margarita.
I’ll have another.
‘Following the leader’ in Spain, lying
in a field under a startle of Spanish stars,
seeing the sun set at the end of the world,
watching it rise again in a chorus line
of windmills. And now we’ve had another
round with the bulls, sangria and Gaudi.
We swam bare in the Caribbean
under the full moon and at home
beneath the arc of Hale-Bopp,
below the fire blink of Mars.
Three decades of swimming years:
The crystal air water of Corfu,
the glassy Sea of Cortez,
Croatia’s Blue Cave.
We swam from boats in the Ionic Sea
the Mediterranean; daring swims
in Costa Rica’s wild waves,
The Devil’s Pool on Victoria Falls.
We swam with turtles in the Pacific,
a kaleidoscope of colored fish in the Red Sea,
fantastical creatures off Heron Island,
phosphorous in an inland sea.
Oh love, we swim our river
again and again.
We rode elephants in Zimbabwe, camels in Egypt,
horses on a Florida beach, a mo-ped in Santorini,
and way too many Disney roller coasters.
We soaked in a Japanese bathhouse,
climbed a cliff face in Korea,
slid through caves in Belize;
hiked Scotland, the Italian coast,
and over the streets of Paris.
In China a little boy once crossed a raging
river just to return one green stone to us.
We are blessed to have ‘seen the world.’
But what I love best is that each June
we two sit on our sun-warmed terrace
to watch the fading of the light
over the cliffs on the longest day.
I’ll have another.
(but, actually didn’t)