Volumes

you bring me books
the way I offer flowers to the ones I love
and I know I'm on your mind
when you begin to read
for me.

or if not, at least you speculate -
you ask what might compel, and unlike daisies,
your choices always last the years.
Good or lousy, humor and nuance,
your choices gift me thus;
I need not choose.

Mistrusting God and day's end,
and the folding back of cold sheets,
and the smell of secret fear,
still, I rely upon your taste.

When I am dead and gone, a shelf of works
left in your name, will be as much my life preserved
as pictures in a family album,

as much a key to Scripture
as the double helix.

Our children, years from now, will wonder
shrug, and turn the page.