reading love poems wherein he answers 
questions asked by his wife about the length 
and breadth and depth of his love for her 
who could I think of but my own beloved. 

There was that moment that distant blue 
that shone through centuries and more, 
blue even older in your eyes blue reflected 
millennia ago off the Euphrates the 
Blue Nile the whole blue Pacific Ocean 

when I knew I had loved you before there were 
Octobers and Augusts, before monuments 
made to the moon and the stars, which were 
ours even before calendars were marked on 
stones or bones those thousands of years 

before anyone had left Africa for Asia before 
anyone knew the blue of the Aegean Sea 
and its blueness and stars were etched 
on stone and painted on walls. I loved you 
sacred before temple, synagogue, or church 

when love was blue water in a green cathedral 
under a new blue sky and the water fell from 
cliff stone into sun-sparkled air became the 
dazzled light of water falling as I am still so 
dazzled as earth draws me falling incandescent 

for you now as through all those centuries 
now as then as always I love you as the blue 
water bends to touch the shore as we touched 
our shores under moons and stars as we loved 
again and again all this time since touch began. 

—After Aaron A. Abeyta

—An earlier version of this poem appeared in the 30/30 Project at Tupelo Press (July 2024).

Bio: Thomas A. Thomas