Yet Another Invitation

We are beginning again now, again. One walks past the hemlocks to the horses, wind blowing steadily through the valley.

Chickadee song up and down Main Street. Sorrows that apparently are going with us to the grave, maybe beyond.

Blue skies, white snow. At night now the moon dances in the sky, delighted I have learned I am not alone.

Old lonesome. Writing and reading are healing.

She raises her voice a little, puts a hand on my wrist, she insists. We are comprised of apologies.

What is lovely, what lingers? Driving the pickup to Upper Highland Lake talking about poets whose poems we believed could change the world, parking and making love on the beach, stars wild and loons crying out on the black water around us.

Writing by hand in my mid-fifties. Declining yet another invitation.

Camping a lot early in the marriage, stripping and swimming in moonlight, guiding each other by voice into the slippery skein of shared bodies. Hot black coffee and nothing else for lunch.

The thing about falling is you can't decide when it ends, you just fall and find out. Who became good at hiding and why?

Walking away from the chaos again, the lip of ruin, the undulating wellspring of yet another cosmic error. Put it there, brother.