Welcome back to The Daily Poem, the podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, July 30th, 2025.

As I mentioned on Monday, this week's selections are chosen in honor of our sister podcast, Close Reeds,

celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and punctuated with a particular celebration this coming weekend. And today's poem by John Dunn is

about the accruing of love with time, particularly in his marriage to his wife, but I think it's emblematic of

what happens in any great partnerships or shared endeavors, like a good bottle of wine,

something that is tended and nurtured and invested in by people who care about it and about each other, time itself

becomes this richness that seeps in and deepens and enlivens the thing so that when you open it

and taste it seems greater than the sum of its parts. It is greater than the sum of its parts.

Glory to God. The poem is called the Anniversary, and here it is.

All kings and all their favorites, all glory of honors, beauties, wits, the sun itself, which makes times as they pass, is elder by a year now

than it was, thou and I first one another saw. All other things to their destruction draw,

only our love hath no decay. This is no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday, running it never runs from us away,

but truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day. Two graves must hide thine in my course,

if one might death were no divorce. Alas, as well as other princes, we, who prince enough in one

another be, must leave at last in death these eyes and ears, oft fed with true oaths and with sweet

salt tears. But souls, where nothing dwells but love, all other thoughts being inmates, then shall prove this or a love increase it there above,

when bodies to their graves, souls from their graves remove.

And then we shall be thoroughly blessed.

But we know more than all the rest.

Here upon earth we are kings, and none but we can be such kings,

nor of such subjects be. Who is so safe as we, where none can do treason to us, except one of us

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