Sitting beside the Platte on gray rocks,
Kathryn turns to me and says,
“I am learning a new way to love.”
She says it as matter of factly as if
she is telling me about what she ate for breakfast,
and it occurs to me that it could be this easy:
Learn a new way to love. It sounds somehow so possible.
Upstream, there is a bridge that spans the river.
It is low, and I happen to know how high the water gets.
Brown scraps of detritus hang in the willows along the banks
as high as my shoulders. What good is that low bridge then,
I think. The afternoon sun goes right through my skin,
not like teeth, but like sun. It feels so good to be warm to the core.
Love like that, I think. And then I think, what do I know about love?
I have been trying to build a better bridge to you,
but the spring runoff seems to come every day, even in winter,
and rip out the logs, the cross sticks, the lashings.
There was a time I could wade the distance. There was a time
I could swim. But the water is cold and it bites.
Only now as I write this I see—I’ve been building a bridge
not out of love, but out of fear. Something safe. Something
to make the journey easier. Enough. Perhaps I will be washed away.
And the cold, well, that’s part of it, dear. I am learning
a new way to love. I don’t know what it is. But spring
is almost here and the water, it’s already rising.