Drinking It All In
A long way up Bray Road past the point where the first of
two small brooks cross beneath
it came to me in a new way that you and I are still
breathing four decades after we met
at the threshold of the unknown,
the part that comes
after now
and here we are, still there, poised together
even though we were strangers then, and now
you are my most intimate love;
no one knows me better
the sun’s slant was perfect on our walk, every particle or
wave, not a thing wrong with it,
perfect the way it shone, the way it distended the
shadows of things that stop light,
creating dark corollas, opaque spaces, the wild grid of
leafless trees spread across the road,
or shadow patterns of thick foliage of a juniper blanket
on a bank fronting a long porch, the slope of Robert’s
field bending up behind heaving stone walls on its back
without a hint of sweat
but there were no cows today ambling down to lap the brook
just you and I drinking it all in
Jim Culleny
11/9/21