Finding words for her sixty something birthday

For your birthday,
I went fishing for some words for you, 
casting my net in the ocean
of my memories.

Many memories I caught,
beautiful and glad, but then I had 
to let them go again, 
for you are bigger than my memory, 
residing in the hearts and minds of 
many more than me.

So, standing by the shore, I thought to fly a kite instead
and catch some phrases from the ocean breeze,
to seize a sentence telling how I loved 
the vast and open spaces of our shared experience.

But then I stopped and turned around
for you are solid ground and not as fickle 
as the breeze, nor changeable as rolling seas.

I look to land instead, beyond the tides 
for you are bedrock 
where the ocean of my memory resides.

But land has fewer words than I would wish.
I cannot fish for words in rock nor net them 
like a butterfly in air.

So I stood there, 
dumb and wordless on the land 
until you took my hand and held it tight in yours. 

Then there was need for words no more.

Sky and dirt

Here it hums,
the green machinery of life
left running for a billion years
uninterrupted and un-stilled;
the silent services fulfilled, unmetered
and delivered free by every leaf
on every tree and every green grass blade. 

This grace of God displayed,
this genius of creative flair,
fuelled with photons fed on air,
an interchange of sky and dirt,
a marriage made in heaven and earth,
and mediated through a tree. 

May You, in turn,

make something marvellous,

from me.