Time in A Bottle

I did not know I was happy back then.

Each day more chores to do

never enough money.

The children like steps and stairs

the youngest newer than the springtime.

It is so long ago when we sat on the porch

sipping hot coffee in the early quiet spring  morning.

Our children asleep in their beds.

On the table next to the coffee pot

a rolled newspaper full of war

and drama of the day, lay untouched.

I remember looking up at you

Your hair flowing in the morning breeze.

I saw you then not as a wife

or mother to my children,

but as the woman

I could never get enough of

when we first met.

I thought how good your hair would feel

falling onto my bare chest in our bed.

If only I could have frozen that moment in time

put it into a bottle like a captured insect.

To open and breathe its fragrance,

again and again.

To last me forever.

If you would have asked me then,

my love are you happy?

There on the old porch with lilac’s

 growing up its broken trellis

in springtime abundance.

Beside the fragrant pathways

of a far off spring

I would have answered

yes my love.

Very happy,