To the Man I Married

I

You are my earth and all the earth implies:

The gravity that ballasts me in space,

The air I breathe, the land that stills my cries

For food and shelter against devouring days.

You are the earth whose orbit marks my way

And sets my north and south, my east and west,

You are the final, elemented clay

The driven heart must turn to for its rest.

If in your arms that hold me now so near

I lift my keening thoughts to Helicon

As trees long rooted to the earth uprear

Their quickening leaves and flowers to the sun,

You who are earth, O never doubt that I

Need you no less because I need the sky!

II

I can not love you with a love

That outcompares the boundless sea,

For that were false, as no such love

And no such ocean can ever be.

But I can love you with a love

As finite as the wave that dies

And dying holds from crest to crest

The blue of everlasting skies.