The Moon Wants to Marry Me

Oh morning you are always there when I wake up!

The snow sparkles at 3 a.m. and tucks itself into the holes in my shoes and frigid air rushes my lungs and I burst out laughing.

The dog and I go east at different paces, perfectly aware of one another.

The pale gold weather ring in the sky widens as if the moon wants to marry me because I am serious but in a fun way, like reading Gone with the Wind in one sitting, and so I say "yes."

It is so quiet I can hear the dog rooting in snowbanks a hundred yards away.

I can hear the ringing in my ears from not enough sleep and too much reading and that makes me laugh because it's not annoying but more like a sustained xylophone note played by someone who understands that spontaneity arises from strict discipline.

"I will marry you too," I say aloud to the birch trees, who are very sensitive and always have been.

The crows mutter insults as I pass beneath their nest but I remind them which one of us eats raw potatoes in muddy fields while farmers stalk us with shotguns and it gets them going like my drunk Irish uncles.

Jesus is a snow bank and a single flake of snow and also now this sentence.

Who understands necessity - meaning what is it for? - understands love, at last.

I slip near the brook and bang my knee and grow still a few minutes and the tears on my face - from the cold and from laughing - freeze until my cheeks hurt.

Back home I shovel a little, stopping now and then to study squirrel tracks in the yard, which are suprisingly deep, so much so moonlight does not reach all the way to their bottom.

Is this really the last cup of coffee I will ever drink?

Often when I pray I try to repeat what worked previously but it never does, as if God despises repetition.

How else can we explain snow flakes?

Instead of meditating I mentally walk the familiar trails but in early summer and say hi to the lovely flowers and they all flutter and sway happily except the dandelions which are arrogant and proud and accept praise as only what is due and so before them I genuflect, and hold the bow, because what is yellow and bright is right, always.

Do you know what bluets do when they see stars?

She has a small field of freckles to the left of one eye - each as distinct as Orion in February - and also a little smile that says "I see you noticed my freckles."

Robins wintering over means what?

What say we slip out behind the chapel you and I and kiss each other a couple thousand times and get naked in the tall grass and moonlight there all sweaty and exhausted and - still wanting more - call it metaphysics?