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August 3, 2010, Volume 17 Nr. 7, Issue 258
    
Thirty Years Together

JeanneE and Jozef Hand-Boniakowski

Celebrating thirty years together with the posting our renewal vows for the third time around.  Forever and two.

Renewal of Vows

You have given flowers, no one else can know.
September oak breathes bergamot and i become a Rose
Straight stemmed and deeply rooted.  You wept
dewdrops, silver, slow sharing the unfolding of your
lotus soul.  Amidst winter's paper flowers we planted
this new seed: Autumn harvest child our garden
grows with thee.  Building a cedar greenhouse, a seed
within me bloomed, son of the wave and waters born
at Thanksgivings moon.  The red scar blooms along your side
the hero's brand by knife.  My tendrils will trace its fade
to white, this rune of the gift of life.  A thousand Vermont
wildflowers or a single drying bloom, the flower of you is in
my heart and your heart is my true home.  Together we are
blossoming, forever we will grow, again today we marry let the
whole world know.  And all the simple measures of giver as
gift, in acts of love fall softly through the day like marigolds. 

We were born together and together we shall be forever more. 
We shall be together when the white wings of death scatter our days.
We shall be together in the silent memory that is each other.
But let there be spaces in our togetherness, and let the winds of the
heavens dance between us.
We love one another and are bonded together like a moving sea
between the shores of our souls.
We fill each other's cup and give another of our bread.
We sing and dance together joyously and let each of us be alone,
even as the strings of a flute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
JeanneE, you are my best friend, my needs answered.
You are the field which i sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
In the sweetness of our friendship i find laughter and sharing of pleasures
and in the dew of every day things my heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
i love you.  i marry you each and every day.  On this special day like like
the bramble and the Rose, intertwined, we celebrate our growth together.

How do i love thee?  Let me count the ways.  
i love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.
i love thee to the level of every day's most quiet need by sun or candlelight.
i love thee freely, as men strive for right.
i love thee purely as they turn from praise.
i love thee with the passions i put to use in my childhood's faith.
i love thee with the breadth, smiles, tears of all my love and life!
What i do and what i dream includes thee.
As the wine must taste of its own grape i celebrate myself, and sing myself.
And what i assume, you shall assume
for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Here to put your lips upon mine - i put my lips upon thine.
With the comrades long dwelling kiss or the wife's/husband's kiss.
Foor i am the wife/husband and i am the comrade.

11 Aug + 13 Oct 2010.

© 1980, 1991, 2010 Jozef & JeanneE Hand-Boniakowski  
With thanks to Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Walt Whitman.

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