Marriage

When we with the new sun
blazed out in the bright world
and returned as the days sighed
their endings, I cannot say our
married lives, still in their 
green and vertical velocity,
at first bore the watermark
of inseparability. Two plants 
in one garden; it always
starts that way. 

We spoke in the metaphors 
of marriage; we honored our
bond, but filed it among
the days’ lists and demands—
You were you and I was I;
we poured and emptied 
ourselves into other lives,
earnest professions, consuming hours,
moments flowing to years, indulging
love’s needs when labor released us

to the peace of weekends holidays 
nightfall and dawn,
the feeding times of love, tending
the sacraments of presence
and touch, the tasks and blessings
of transmuting twoness: words 
spoken and heard becoming 
one story, our roots so strongly 
interlaced, one day we noticed how
we bloomed each other’s flowers. 

Our seedlings rose: created,
rescued, and saving graces; 
love’s unexpected physics revealing
its expansion into every beloved form;
cherished life grows life. Dogs, cats, winged
visitors and their trees, our wildlife children,
our happy bounty, our holy flowing progeny. 

The season of shadowed
years and rounded pain arrived;
we two midwives, easing 
and failing to ease 
our fathers’ farewells, 
our mothers’ goodbyes,
ushering their flights into spirit—
our love became respite, 
harbor, scaffold: we could 
have fallen deeply darkly apart
had our entwined souls
not safely caught and held
our hearts. Loss may feed
or kill a garden. We leaned
to the light and became
new again, green and growing. 

And now these days of dappled 
blossoms everywhere; I cannot
turn but meet our love, the life 
that we have grown, the dazzling 
joy our time-tumbling years now yield 
as daily harvest. How long ago 
did I become we, did self dissolve, 
supplanted by this flowering us? 

I know the way of gardens,
how they ever-change; life rises,
life descends. There will be a day 
when one will wake alone, seeking
the known embrace, chilled roots 
reaching for roots not there. Turn
then to the light we become,  
the music of the world that sings 
how love can make one of two: within, 
without, budding here and blooming beyond, 
in mystery and promise, forever married.

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Happy Valentine’s Day! Life-giving and love-sharing relationships to all.