Linda J Austin

For Bruce


After 45 years
the red grosgrain cover
of American Poetry and Prose
still bleeds in wrinkled hands,
leaving a pink stain
on my white flannel gown.
I search for love poems
among the Puritans
the Quakers
Anglican Gentlemen.

I must read through
Agrarian Sentimentalist,
Deism and Revolution,
the Connecticut Wits
before Classic ends
and Romantic begins.

Words you can’t
bend, shape or speak.

Some may say our love
is like a crisp, flat sheet
of blank bright paper
blinding as the snow
bounding through sunlit panes.
We know love is like
a fine paper held up to the light
stamped with a distinctive watermark
"that those comforts we
have in each other
may be daily increased."