As we both sat and watched boats float by, on the Rhine, we mused of how we met.

I sat in front of a beer in Koln, when a scarf brushed my cheek. My gaze found her, shy and sweet. ‘At what cost’ I thought, ‘might I try to know her?’

My chance dimmed when, with a twirl and a grin, she was gone. Where she went, I knew not, but in time, our love would cross.

One day I read on Rhine’s shore, when I saw her run for her scarf, caught in a gust. Like a frog, I jumped moss , rocks and logs. Yet high up it went, now a piece of the sky, lost in the far and wide.

She drew up to my side; ‘I know you, you sip tea and read’ she said. Her name was Kate, oh such fate, ‘You will come with me and we will buy a new scarf’.

We tripped through stores and found a scarf , but not for her, for me. This gift of soft grays I held tight, not to lose, in the March wind.

The next day I bought her a bronze charm, for her arm, and set in on the bed, near her heart. When we woke, we pledged to carve, a piece of time, on the Rhine.