Big or small, i love her All

My wife turns 40 next month, and has been literally working her ass off to enter the next decade in the body and spirit she desires. It's been a pure inspiration to watch her commitment, her shift to a positive energy and self-image, and her emerging physical and inner strength.

I don't love or even desire her any more because she's 20 pounds lighter and tauter (though it is awful nice). But wow, the energy that pulses out of her is exhilarating, and I have a new-found respect for her physically that only adds to my life-long awe at her artistic and interpersonal and spiritual and professional and culinary and musical and and and... strengths.

Here's a poem I wrote way back in our early days, when I was in Africa missing her while she finished her school year in the third-world republic of Texas. She's just mentioned it in her fantastic Mama Renew blog about this same weight-loss quest, so it's a good excuse to dredge out the whole darn thang:

oh you! my quiet corner
i come into you to rest
oh i! down of your nest

oh you! window above my door
flood my gray with dappled light
oh i! your sleepless night

oh you! my checkered floor
i dance your broad expanse
oh i! your beating core

You're every-thing this house is
And every-where that Home is is you
Home is where i lay my head on your breast
Oh you! my sleeping, my dancing, my place of rest

Oh us! Oh we! Oh you-and-me!