Drinking It All In

A long way up Bray Road past the point where the first of two small brooks cross beneath the road
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 when we met
and now you’re 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 thing 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 upward 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