To My Wife (1988) Poem by Rob Dyer

Prepared by many partial loves
I loved you for the movement of your hand
glimpsed through an open door.
I have never known you without love.
You are not always beautiful,
yet I stand amazed each moment of our life
at each tiny, perfect gesture,
each grace, each thought, discreet and elegant,
a mind so clear, a love so pure of truth
dishonesty, self-love can only bow
ashamed when you pass by.
Every tiny bridal intensity that I caress springs
clear as crystal from the very throne of God.

You were the first, I fantasize,
when I surveyed the womben in the cave,
to stand apart, complete, wise
in the ways of mammoth and bison,
more than a place to father, suckle sons,
and share without offense
my private, special ledge,
my first and last monogamy.

Perhaps your mother's Rilke formed you so,
embodied that a lover see within your eyes
his clear and caustic eye;
perhaps you grew
conditioned by her reading books, her Murdoch,
Marcel Proust, the Mauriacs she loved;
when all around her wrote, you were her text
crafted in that imaged forge of poetry.

I laugh and cry to see imprinted on our sons
the many faces of your hidden grace.