January is like navigating
ice floes – then eventually heading east
for aromatic landfalls, or west
following the setting sun, or south
for the long haul like some latter day Cook,
journeying without guides into foreign parts.
The first port of call is in February.
Love fills the sails, the swell lifts the bow.
We met one July, married one August.
In May our daughter will be fifty one.
The bow lifts in the swell, the canvas fills with love.
Fearing the doldrums, I write each poem
as if it were to be the last – whistling up
favourable words speaking of love,
voyaging without charts.