We

I gave her a scroll in the bark of eucalyptus.

She gifted me a nest in the stump of an oak.

I offered her reptilian roots of a ficus.

She called, quick, catch the hemorrhagic sunset.

We gave each other the same book by Wendell Berry.

I led her to the rush of white water.

She took me to its silence.

I found fallen leaves swimming like fish.

She heard a song in the grove of flowering acacias.

I promised gladly to be her mother, brother, father, lover.

I gave her the joy of driving off the map.

She took me to a safe unknown.

I pointed her to white horses that were llamas.

She led me to the place where we peed in the Forest of Dean.

Together we were Hanseled and Grettled.

When I showed her the wind-pocked rock

she found an answering elm in the reflecting pond.

We saw petals fall over a footbridge in Kyoto

though we’ve never been to Japan. We listened

for the clarinet concerto in an estuary of migratory wings.

I led her to the breaking news on the radio
She showed me a portal to the realm of nocturnes.
We traveled to Ketchikan with its totems and raven rattles,
then found our own creation myth
in how we were born together.

Together we died on Oxford Street rolling off the bus.

And died again on a wet road in the Dordogne,

were lifted as the tides rose in the Bay of Fundy.

We are old together in the albums of our bones

And young as the sun inside our morning melon.