We had a bit from The Velveteen Rabbit, starting '"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day...' and ending '...once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.' Perhaps a bit cutesy, but I'd loved the book as a child so I was happy.
Some not-terribly original suggestions:
\link{http://www.smcdaniel.net/genepool/serendipty/mywife.html\A Dedication to My Wife} (Eliot)
\link{http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/116.html\Sonnet 116} (Shakespeare)
\link{http://www.portablepoetry.com/poems/john_donne/the_goodmorrow.html\The Good Morrow} (John Donne)
\link{http://heatheranne.freeservers.com/famous/confirmation.htm\The Confirmation} (Edwin Muir)
\link{http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/10797/\The Bargain} (Sir Philip Sidney)
Or a few I can't find online...
Stars may fall in one's hand (A.S.J. Tessimond)
When you are with me, I, who am all too sane, am a
little mad.
Through you I see colours where yesterday were grey,
black, white, and tomorrow perhaps grey, black, white
will be again.
Your eyes reflect impossible towns, trees, flowers,
inconcievable lights and faces.
Your voice holds incredible echoes of unlikely words.
Your time has no days, hours, minutes;
And all things are possible;
And stars, like snow, may fall in one's hand.
True ways of knowing (Norman MacCaig)
Not an ounce excessive, not an inch too little,
Our easy reciprocations. You let me know
The way a boat would feel, if it could feel,
The intimate support of water.
The news you bring me has been news forever,
So that I understand what a stone would say
If only a stone could speak. Is it sad a grassblade
Can't know how it is lovely?
Is it sad you can't know, except by hearsay
(My gossiping, failing words) that you are the way
A water is that can clench its palm and crumple
A boat's confiding timbers?
But that's excessive, and too little.Knowing
The way a circle would describe its roundness,
We touch two selves and feel, complete and gentle,
The intimate support of being.
The way that flight would feel a bird flying
(If it could feel) is the way a space that's in
A stone that's in a water would know itself
If it had our way of knowing.
You are part of me (Frank Yerby)
You are part of me. I do not know
By what slow chemistry you first became
A vital fibre of my being. Go
Beyond the rim of time or space, the same
Inflections of your voice will sing their way
Into the depths of my mind still. Your hair
Will gleam as bright, the artless play
Of word and glance, gesture and the fair
Young fingers waving, have too deeply etched
The pattern of your soul on mine. Forget
Me quickly as a laughing picture sketched
On water, I shall never know regret
Knowing no magic ever can set free
That part of you that is a part of me.