Let Me Have One More Day

Love Poem by Tim Hicks

Let me have just one more day, 

let me have this day and let it not be my last.

Let me have just one more day to feel the sap in the stems, 

to hear the language of birds and the wind,

one more day of light, one more day of turning,

one more day balanced on the precipice, one more day

to bask and revel, one more day of the exquisite pain,

one more day to risk a bit more, just one more day 

to feel the tide’s pull, to be swept and tossed, 

to fear the loss, one more day to empty and be bereft.

Let me have one more day that I might find you and 

find myself in you, to allow the wonder of the dance, 

one more day to reveal and conceal, one more day 

without words to say what I can not tell you, one more day 

to be willing, to allow time’s victory and defeat,

one more day carried on the upwelling, my body 

salt in the tears, some kind of habitation, some kind of crystallization,

some kind of membrane between. 

I don’t mean to be trite but

I love you like water loves gravity, like lungs love oxygen,

like the grasses with the breeze, like the torrents over the rocks.

I’m serious here. My gaze wants to linger longer on you.

I have not had enough of your demands. I have more of laughter to learn….

This poem reminds me to celebrate my great good fortune in having people I love so very dearly in my life. May I cherish each day, knowing that the number of those days is beyond my control. I learned from Rumi to embrace it all, though, and I truly do. Gratitude flows through me from the first playful wags of my dog’s tail as soon as I open my eyes till the last kiss at night. To make this authentic, I must admit that between those two events, I often slip into my ego’s demands and complaints (“I took out the trash last time!”). I try not to linger there though, and usually I don’t.

Please visit my website at www.coupleswisdom.com.

Thanks to Larry Robinson for sending this poem, and blessings to all!