Watching the bride
and her father walk
the long distance
from the house
to the benches
in the grass,
I don’t even try
to hide my tears,
fat and warm,
my whole being aware
of how big it is
to give one’s life
to another,
and with her
every step,
my own
wedding comes
closer until
it is me
in a white dress
on the arm
of my father,
my husband
the man at the end
of the aisle,
my own lips
speaking till death
do us part,
my eyes glittering,
spilling, wet—
how sweet now
when the man
on my left
offers me his tissue
and somehow
with his kindness
and a wrinkled hand,
I touch those tears
thirty years ago.
Posts Tagged ‘marriage’
Sitting with My Husband at the Wedding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged marriage, tear, time, wedding on September 22, 2025| 6 Comments »
As It All Comes Down
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, grief, hiking, inner landscape, intimacy, marriage on September 13, 2025| Leave a Comment »
On the day his brother died,
we walked, mostly silent.
The old aspen trees were tall
and dead. In a meadow, we found
a single yellow flower where almost
all else was brown. The air carried
the wild scent of elk, dank, sweet.
And the wind made of dry grass
an epiphany of sound.
But it was the quiet landscape
inside us that was most changed.
In a voice so bare I could hardly hear,
he said, These are the days
that bring us closer together.
Conversation that Didn’t Happen Out Loud While Hiking
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, love, marriage, unspoken on July 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »
It was instantly lush,
the way nothing else
was on that hillside,
but as we stepped
into the aspen grove,
what was crisp and
sun-dried in the sun
became gloriously green.
And the scent of it!
The fecund, feral scent
of it! And I understood,
in that moment, how
both can be true
at the very same time—
how the same hillside
can be both dying
of drought and sheltered
by shade. Same as our lives
have been. And though
I did not turn to you
in that moment and say
I love you, I’d like to think
you knew it anyway,
like to think the truth
of how I love you
clings to you the way
dew drops cling
to the leaves of the lupine.
I’d like to think that even
though I didn’t turn around,
you knew what I was thinking,
and you were saying back to me,
yes, I love you, too.
By What Strange Truth
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beauty, grief, marriage, paradox on March 24, 2025| 6 Comments »
Walking in the field
or touching your cheek,
eating a thin slice of pear
or listening to you breathe,
I understand now
how everything, everything
is stitched through by grief
and somehow that makes
the weave of this quiet moment
beside you even more
unbearably beautiful.
The Ripening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fruit, imperfection, marriage, patience, pears, ripening on September 19, 2024| 11 Comments »
At the roadside stand,
I buy you a flat of pears.
They are hard and slightly
scarred, lumpy as Bartletts
often are, still wearing
the deep green of unripe fruit.
Some bear a garish red blush
on their shoulders where
the leaves did not hide them,
and all are stippled
with freckle-like dots, each one
a small celebration of imperfection.
There will be a day soon
when the pears will golden
and the warm kitchen air
will be thickly strung
with the scent of pear,
sweet and floral,
a scent that reminds
me of walking the rows
of the orchard in long ago summers
gleaning the smallest fruits.
Sometimes what is left behind
has the chance to become sweeter
than what first seemed more prized.
Remember how we’d pull tree-ripe pears
from the branches to our mouths,
white juice baptizing our chins?
I like the way you lift one now
from the counter,
feel its heft as if testing
for goodness yet to come.
We are no strangers to patience.
Year after year, we have watched
what is hard become treasure.
We have taken the lesson into our bodies,
these imperfect bodies, slightly
scarred, more lumpy with every year,
but oh, the ripening.
The Moment that Mattered
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hiking, husband, love, marriage, resilience on August 4, 2024| 11 Comments »
In the midst of a gnarled aspen grove
where the tree trunks were contorted,
distorted and knobby, my husband,
hiking behind me, joked,
These trees have been through a lot.
And they’re still here.
And I stopped mid trail
and turned to face him.
We’ve been through a lot,
I said. And we’re still here.
And there beneath the misshapen
trees with their leaves still green
and trembling in the wind,
we hugged and cried and cried
and hugged, knowing the full weight
of everything that might have kept us
from this moment.
Surrounded by aspen
and fields of purple asters,
I knew full body that this
was the moment that mattered.
The Changing View
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, husband, love, marriage, river on July 18, 2024| 4 Comments »
He walks along the river’s edge,
boots up to his knees, pitchfork
balanced on his shoulder,
his handwoven bucket hat
balanced on his head. And
I fall in love again. Not with
the man I married, but with
the man he’s become—
the man who has pruned
the coyote willows for days,
for years, so we can see
the river as it changes from clear
to bright red from the storms.
Watch as it runs clear again.
Before the Road Trip
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged car, clarity, love, marriage, practical, service on June 9, 2024| 8 Comments »
Though I do not ask him to,
he rises early and goes
to the car with a razor and
bottle of blue windex
to remove the smear
of the caddis fly hatch
from my windshield.
Over a dozen miles
of spruce and aspen
pass before I see the gift.
For the next three hundred miles,
it’s all I see.
The Waking
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged marriage, silence, trust, waking on May 16, 2024| 8 Comments »
When I wake, it’s your silence
beside me that invites me
to wake into my own silence,
and I begin the day with listening.
By heart I know the difference
between the quiet of your sleep
and the quiet of you dreaming.
and it is by tuning to the gentle
hinge of your breath that I
relearn my place in the world.
Even before my eyes are open
I greet the dawn-drenched day,
not with an alarm but through a doorway
of trust. How quietly opening happens.
The Radiant Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, breakfast, marriage, present, spring, time on May 15, 2024| 6 Comments »
Beside the flower bed, still unplanted,
we sit on the porch with coffee and toast
and watch the field where the swallows
swoop and dive in their own ritual of breakfast.
Hummingbirds chase each other across the grass,
small bodies like darts that pin us
to this moment. Would I, if I could, pin us
to this radiant now when the whole world
is greening and the morning sun paints
gold on every surface? Or is its value
partly based in how quickly it passes?
So while I can, I sink into this measure
of bliss, cup still warm in my hand,
and breathe in the sweet, sharp scent of grass.
Someday soon, there will be flowers.