Then

Our ideals, then, were liquored with blackberries,

That would form the evening air,

Into a sweet, heavy stillness.

.

Your dappled voice was almost hidden

Along the waters edge, and in the eddies

Your hair would drape over the smooth curve of rock,

While your eyes reflected the far off storms.

.

The banter of our dreams then:

You following the worn path of bears,

Guiding us over the barbed wire,

And crossing into our place.

.

There you whispered raindrops into my ears,

And I cobbled together water stories.

Those were dreams we had then,

Savored,

And marked in the hollows of sand

Filling the long, easy spaces between stones.

.

I don’t remember the pear tree then,

Why didn’t we reach up it’s long trunk,

Pruned in the year of bears,

Clothed in glistening leaves of poison oak,

And held fast by thorns?

…

Where I go now there is a tree,

It grows tall and straight, and,

In some years, hangs heavy with fruit.

I sit on the stories between the sand,

Biting down into the almost ripe memories

Of the love we shared, and still lingers

In the spaces between stone and water.

.

Nearly full and sweet,

Juices rolling off the stone,

Soaking into the sand, like our tears:

Watered by the storms that you dreamed of then.