On Your Birthday

Standing among the stones that go in rings
on a bare shore the water’s lately left,
having emerged from the waves’ deep cleft,
you new and darling, with the hair that clings
around your neck, and mouth, as the wind flings
threats at the land for the land’s fine theft,
you on the magic stones who wait foot-deft,
come to me now by land, put on your things,

and I shall spend my life in payment for
the sight of all the jewels the world can hold –
they are on you, so many in a few,
the gift of the now-crossed stone-gleaming shore . . .

and the sea and the shore and the wind see me with you
and take no payment, since you were so bold.