#SOL16: After Pennsylvania

Dreaming of Horses Running (M.A. Reilly, 2009)

Below is a poem Rob wrote for me years ago.  He found it again this past December and gave it to me on our 25th wedding anniversary.  A friend recently said to me, you and Rob had such a love story. And she's right we did.

Here's the poem he wrote. I want to share the work, our love, his poem to me and preserve all of that somehow--here in this digital wonderland.

I love you, Rob. No words of mine can capture that quite right. Your words however... 

After Pennsylvania

(for MaryAnn

Shrouded in the deep serenity

of meditative hills

where the music

of winter winds

covers the silence

& I wait

for the future

is a rose

born

of just this moment

(it unfolds

even as I speak

each petal

wraps

a memory

& falls across faraway days

where 2 horses

nuzzle:

the brown male nibbles gently

at her white ear

the other side of the fence

her careful eyes lidded white

& I remember the look of you

when you showed me

how you sat

on the counter in your kitchen

& stared down the road

prayerful

I would be soon

in your arms

but that fence

kept us apart

or the Sunday

as I practiced Zen

& waited for you

& drifted in my study

only to lose all concentration:

every sound

could be you

there

for me to

nuzzle

& without fence

share

each other, feed

each other, play

What sounds!

Was that me

laughing like that

& you

did I hear you squeal

as you took

food from my mouth

you fed my heart:

I who have always been

on my way

to something else

have followed this path

of fallen rose petals

to a hill

where I see

2 horses

graze together

in an open field

as I stop to catch

my breath

.

#SOL16: Passing

Rob at home.

Yesterday, March 8th at 4:30 p.m. the world lost a beautiful man. My husband, Rob Cohen, passed in the arms of his son and me.

The world is more grey.

He, however, has found peace that eluded him during his six-month struggle with lung cancer.

I love him more than words can name.

Don't forget to leave some breadcrumbs, Rob...

#SOL15: My Husband Dreams of Different Neighborhoods

My husband dreams of different neighborhoods where we have lived some with railroad tracks and others with roads that wind past the front door of a house disappearing like trees in fog. And in one neighborhood our dog, Max, is lost and is wandering. A UPS truck driven by itself turns a corner. And now both  the dog and the truck are coming down the road and Max waits at a corner for the truck to pass and as it does, he's transformed into a man driving a Dodge Dart.

This is the way it is.

All the while, snow blankets the ground.