Anniversary Prose

Today, we reaffirm our commitment to each other as beloveds
and partners in marriage.
We continue to strive to be sensitive to each other's needs,
to be open and understanding with each other, and to share our thoughts,
our feelings, and our experiences with each other.
We renew our promise to try always to bring out the qualities of
forgiveness, compassion, and integrity in our selves and in each other.
We continue to cherish each other's uniqueness.
We continue to share in life's joys and remain steadfast
and comfort each other through life's sorrows.

May we forever continue through life's journey beside each other,
our hearts still filled with love, respect, and admiration, as it was so many years ago.
May our caring for each other grow deeper; may our love for each other grow stronger.
May our home be filled with hope, peace, and love as it has been for
all these years we have shared together.
May we share just as many more.

Thank you for your love throughout the years.
How else could I become what I've become?
All your plans and hopes and even fears
Now come together in what I have done.
Know that I am grateful for your love.
Your hard work is mirrored now in mine.
On you all my accomplishments must shine.
Underneath my pride, your spirits move.

This home that you have built is made of love,
Hope and happiness, hard grit and tears,
All the strength of will a heart can move,
Now ready to enfold us many years.
Know that we are grateful for the gift
You've given us by working day and night.
Over us though storms and trouble drift,
Under this roof all is good and right.

Fifty years is really not enough
In which to plumb the depths of someone's soul.
Fifty more years, then, should be the goal:
To know the beauty of another's love,
Yearnings shape, and life-long shadows buff.

Yet life was never easy in those years.
Everest is sometimes hard to climb.
A will to love has brought you to this time,
Rich in joys that time cannot remove.
So may this day be filled with happy tears!

For some the years turn out to be a blessing:
In life and love the choices of the heart
Find their way to lushly colored meadows
Touched at night by fantasies of stars.
Yearnings sway like dancers in the wind.

You have learned the music of caressing,
Each taking passionately the other's part.
All the silent beauty of your shadows
Reappears as song that nothing jars,
Sheer happiness unfolding without end.

Fifty years together is a mountain
In truth not all of us would wish to climb.
For umpteen thousand days... but, well, who's countin'?
The two of you have trudged up this incline.
Yet what you see up there must be sublime.

Your love has shaped your lives much as the weather
Erodes the Earth into majestic forms.
A half a century of life together
Reveals the rock beneath the mountain heather,
Splendidly unmoved by passing storms.