Must one of the reasons you love me
be that I write poetry?

What happens when I am old
and the only poems I offer you are left in my dreams?
How will you know at daybreak
that I wrote you yet another one?

I worry about these things.

Perhaps I should become sleepless in poetry.
Awaken you with a gentle nudge.
You will know that I wrote you a masterpiece.
A masterpiece that only a man that has grown old
with his love beside him would know.

When I die,
place your favorite on my headstone.
What is written in stone,
you know the rest.