I did not know I was happy back then.
Each day more chores to do
Always working
never enough money.
The children always taking prioty.
the youngest newer than the springtime.

It was so long ago then
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 ***
a rolled newspaper full of war
and drama of the day, lay untouched.

I remember looking up at you
your blonde hair
flowing in the morning breeze.
I saw you then not as a wife
or mother to my children,
but as that 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 now,
my love were you happy back then?
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,
so very happy.