February

Happy February

This month, our culture celebrates love, by way of Valentine's Day and all its trappings.  But a popular notion of romance - butterflies and cards and suragry things, or th euncontrollable falling into love as if from a cliff into th eriver - often oversahdows the deeper, sober affection two people who have loved each other long and well. 

WHEN WE WALKED TOGETHER

When we walked together

in the cool of the evening,

walked together, you and I,

in the cool of the evening,

after the heat of the day,

after the long hours under the sweating sun,

after the buzzing words like black flies

had at long last ceased their querulous stinging,

after the questions, after the answers

that refused at last to answer anything at all,

in the cool of the evening, when we walked

in the garden, you and I, in the cool of the evening.

When it was no longer important

for either of us to speak, since the words,

whatever words they might have been,

would have been beside the point,

would have said nothing our hearts

did not already know, where simply being there,

there in the cool of the evening

was all that finally mattered,

with the long night coming on, and the last trill

of birdsong fading off in the distance

by the ridge of the tree line,

when we walked together there in the garden,

in the cool of the evening, you and I.