This devotion, only the bees savor: golden, stirring.
No pageantry, their names for each other are like this,



every day an innocent rosary of years, as if nothing
can displace them. Beneath their arbor, deer have lain,



grass fashioning the elegant stitch of rest. And the pair
of horses? The corral is empty today, mud trembling



with hoofprints half filled with spring’s embrace.
Beneath the wisteria’s unrestrained enthusiasm the pine



anchors those dazzling clusters of purple, nourishes the
leaning like a common lover, full of promises of amber and



shooting stars. the sway of elbows and curves fits comfortably
and after so many seasons lifting together into the shine



and the darkness, how we might rest on each other’s breasts,
manna and manure becoming part of our ripened pleasure.