My Ann by Douglas K. Thompson - Caregiver Poetry

My Ann
by Douglas K. Thompson (DKThomp)

Hi everyone, Isn't it strange how a memory of long ago will suddenly pop into one's mind? Why does the mind connect some throughly pleasant event that happened many years ago with what one is doing at the present time? Is it because I am getting old? If so, then getting old isn't so bad after all. I was up at 3:30 this morning wide awake when these thoughts came upon me. For some reason, I began to reminisce about the summer of 1956 soon after Ann and I were married. We took a couple of days off work and drove to the Outer Banks of North Carolina where we spent a perfectly lovely weekend at the Cape Hatteras Motel at Buxton, N.C. Both nights we walked down the beach as far as the Cape Hatteras lighthouse and back. We walked hand in hand and I distinctly remember how the moon light shimmered off of the ocean, and how it seem to cast a glow off Ann's long hair. She wore beautifully long hair in those days. How wonderfully pleasant is this memory. Thinking about this I started to write a poem, a sonnet to my lovely Ann. As she walks into this becloulded labyrinth of forgetfuness and darkness these momories gird up the loins of my heart as the Word of God puts it. In the last stanza there is a great contrast between what my heart of hearts would truly like, and what the unspoken knowledge of my mind surely knows. Sometimes my emotions overcome my reason. Maybe this is a sign that I am still young at heart even at this age.

-- Douglas K. Thompson

My Ann

My Ann, my beloved whose name means all of grace.
My heart is yours, your endearing charms I do embrace.
Long walks we had hand in hand along the Outer Banks without a care.
The moonlight in your hair gave love's luster that only I could share.

Thrilled by her gentle kindness my love for her continued to grow.
Like the dove coming with refulgent tenderness set my heart aglow.
Her smiles, her dreams, her tears
from all her yesteryears now unhappily dimmed, not gone, just mixed with her fears.

Her cheerful composure, her spirited heart will not be broken
by this sad dearth of her loving warm words now left unspoken.
The swelling solicitude of this wretched disease is taking its terrible toll.
Oh, axe of woe, forebear your cutting stroke, my anxious heart is still whole.

Come back my dear, come back my heart, come back to me if you can!
Come back to me, come back my dearest, come back to me, My Ann.

-- Douglas K. Thompson