The sun’s touch soft today, the air perfumed with sweetest taste of spring, simple, with no effort, the round globe leans toward its lover, longs for love, and every living thing becomes a blossom. I gave myself an hour – no more than an hour was needed – and left my labor to rest, set it on the desk, and stepped out into sun; it was just as I remembered it. The sky soon filled with overcast, the same moist cotton, grayed with pending rain, the same full drops suspended, the hint of ozone and the songs of birds, the motion that is not my own yet part of me, of which I am a part…

… the songs on the road to wilderness, the greening and the rocky grove, the chill of early summer. And with a single step, enveloped in the body-scent of the towering pines, their bed of reddened needles underfoot, the stillness of the footfall on this mat, motion of the wooden bridge, bouncing with its song of cable and steel, rocked by own small weight and small intention. My hand in her hand. Shown where the secrets of infancy were hidden. In the imagination of a mother’s heart. The size of the gathered cones in small palms, how they fell likes spinning leaves into the river, bobbed then spun under the span, spilled and splashed out of sight, downstream, a short drift to the icy northern waters of Superior…

… walking along the line of rail, it led somewhere, my legs would carry me as far. Not running away, not from Olaf and Hazel, who cared for me like a son. Yet drawn by that unattainable horizon, the rise of land a mile? ten miles? away, the bright etched line of steel that carried empty freightcars to the town, took them away again, filled with grain, where goes the grain so go I. Then an hour later to turn and see the town I lived in small under the sky, the green of the grasses wrinkled by the waves of wind, the wind’s expression, like a song, or like a sigh, from where it came, to touch my face, to where it then was bound. The sky became so large. The land became so large, and I a mote in the prairie’s eye, a speck, a spark, as small as I was and made great by the grandeur of creation that included me…

… when she bent toward me, with the hesitation that comes of the last few inches, the scent of her breath like the blossoms of spring, and the warmth, and the wetness just before the rain. To learn the skin is barrier and portal, both. The gentle exploration, at first a miracle, later more subtle learning, and always, always new…

… the week when we conceived our son…

… my son lays his arm over my shoulder as we walk through the town…

… a new flavor cooked upon my stove; how, after this many meals, there is still delight?…

… a poem from her heart that finds his heart…

What is memory, and what relived? Each love inhabits more of me than tragedies pretend to own. How many flowers have I given and received? Not one of them has ever faded, lost its color, or its perfume.