a gaggle of good things
"There are many ways
to say I love you."
There's the way
of "beautiful also
is the rain."
"Here are distant trees
and the endless lake of gray
sprawled like lifeless plains."
"Here are vaulted clouds
an unbroken but textured array."
"Here is your bride, happy,
encouraged, fulfilled,
full of play."
He has many ways
to say
"I love you."
When I think of what I owe
When I do not own my own
You are the only one alone -
Aside from the One - I know I owe.
My child’s vibrant laugh,
My own self-control.
My refined faith,
My beauty-filled home.
When I think of what I owe
You
I think of being alone:
How different it would be,
How much less,
How much unknown.
You are my creditor and I am in your debt.
Today, I remember
What I could not ever
forget.
(✎E)
There is no history
between us
my experience of you is one continuous loop.
There never was before you
There will be nothing after.
Thus the Apostle's Mystery:
It may be too much to ascribe
to another person,
too divine to live firsthand.
But God the man makes a bride of mankind:
who am I to belittle what he planned?
I am now always wed to you.
I am always of a bed with you.
I am tomorrow always head to you.
Exclusivity
is an eternal setting
in the story of the heart.
This is what the children of all the divorced know:
Why can it not be with whom you said it would be?
May our children never know it.
What begins in ceremony never dies.
It only gets belied.
What grows in covenant never decays.
It only gets betrayed.
There are promises and mistakes,
Oaths and their oathbreaks.
May he bind the cords again tonight
In a moment unfit to share with anyone else.
May he write the words again tonight
In a poem meant only for us
So we know a little better
What it is to be chosen
And never lied to or betrayed -
A selection once done, ever frozen
In time.
What awe it is to be loved -
A beginning with no end.
Endless beginnings as far as the eye can see.
All beginning,
No end.
"Behold, I am making all things new."
Once more: I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
(✎E 📷S)
Got gifted a big date where the dessert was smokey and looked like dirt but tasted like chocolate.
You gave it your best
shot across the bow.
But you are caught between then
and tomorrow and now.
You swam among sharks
circling you in water and in dreams.
But you are spinning in an arc
so fast you're splitting at the seams.
Before you come undone, out of touch
or before you touch the ground:
Remember this is a new decade of your life.
"You always build it better
the second time around."
Welcome to the big 3-0.
(✎E)
Birthday 2019
Adulthood, round 2.
There are so many things
you could be and do -
so many you have done and been.
I can see you a famous writer,
or a well-known picture-taker,
or another path - but always fighter.
Courageous, honest, smile-maker.
Wherever you take me, I will go.
Wherever you work, I will assist.
You are brilliant and brave, you know.
(And impossible to resist).
Be it Spain or outer space,
a new home, new state, new child,
whether we replace inventions
or reinvent our place,
I will be with you
and it will be worthwhile
while wild.
-E
When her fire is burnt out
and in this cold taxi
and with this cold distance
I have no heat left to give her,
be Warmth
please.
(✎E)
Today we woke up to our first storm of 2019. Snow came for the first time and your dad left on a trip for the first time since you were born — giving us a lot to think about. The day was a little adventurous but mostly it was a lot less warm.
I took you outside and set you down and you got real quiet like the snow. You smiled a little but only at first. Then we watched everything be still. Then you looked so serious about it, I had to tell you it wouldn’t stay that way.
Snow melts, and he’ll be back.
“I want to be like my Dad.” -Mike Dunn
Your heart is weighing on my heart.
Lighter than I would've thought,
but no less in need of art.
(✎E)
To befriend someone is to become acquainted with their mind. To agree to walk side by side with their sentiments and keep beseeching, "show me". To search out their thoughts and see what trails they've wandered and which ones they've avoided. It's to become familiar with the places they say seem dark and impenetrable, and to patiently say, "I see that darkness, I have darkness too." It's to move with them — speeding at their speed and slowing at their slow. It's sitting quiet and still at the edges of their cerebral and emotional maps and dreaming together that the page could continue, perhaps. It's apologizing when you trip over the roots that have overgrown some paths. It's marveling at all the landscapes you discover in your friend.
If falling in love is free-falling down in an unexpected and destined ecstasy, becoming friends is the intentional sweaty trudge up a mountain for a view few live to see.
Not one day have I ever regretted our climb towards friendship. Not one day have I lamented traversing your mind — first.
I say rather to those just getting started, if you're going to fall in love, do it on a mountain top, like I did.
If there's a chance you'll forget
don't take it.
Slice clean through an orange
mull:
The veined lines are never straight
but nevertheless delightful.
To be perfect
is not to be precise
but to give delight.
You are flawless today;
Every day.
Take two onions and compare:
full of water,
and increasingly inner
sanctums.
Never two alike.
To be perfect
is an absolute state
of infinite degrees.
No matter how you change,
you are always the choicest variety
of my happiness.
(✎E 📷S)
Wake up around 6am. Your dad comes to get you, puts you into whatever clothes look warm and comfiest (9/10 times this is sweat pants). You help him wake up with giggles and squawks and yelps.
He brings you to me shortly after so you can eat. Then you signal you’re finished by turning your head to stare out the window. You look out the window, I look at you, we snuggle, and I cherish.
Your dad picks you up and you get some of his best, his morning, to play with him, talk at him, and watch him. By 7:30 you’re ready for a nap already.
(✎S 📷S)
I had a whole year
they told me
to decide whether I wanted
to spend every following year
with you.
Go through every season,
till you excise any reason
for breaking us off,
they said.
I had no similar option
with our son:
9 months of wonder,
then lightning, then thunder -
we all fell down.
Whereas you created the mold for yourself
in my heart;
he is supposed to conform to the mold
awaiting him
in my heart.
He must navigate the street around the corner,
the one where we saw him coming.
I didn’t see you coming.
These are two very different
but equal ways of loving.
(✎E 📷S)
September is the month where we get to add another year to marriage and another year since we met. I get to pause, and think about so many days with you that have been filled to the brim with quiet contemplation and conversation, a shared passion.
And the best thought we've had, the best of you and me, now lives and breathes outside of us and watches the world. He often has that look of question as he watches us. He is spitting our image back to us in an uncomfortable and breath-taking way all the time.
It’s been thrilling to see you in someone else every day.
We like to think we’re good at putting our finger on what we know is going to slip through them. But there's a touch of infinity to his joy that's intangible. There's a level of mystery to this thought experiment that's almost painful, but stops just short at awesome. The old fashioned, full-of-awe kind.
Before we were parents we were spouses and before that love interests. And when we don’t know how to be anything, we’re always friends and fellow truth-seekers. I've often thought, there's no one I'd rather suffer with than you. Is that strange? There's also no one I'd rather be deliriously happy with. And that’s the best way I can sum up what marriage has been like.
Cheers, Ev.
I am a long time away from being able to say "the most useful pregnancy advice given to me was..." But I can share my favorite advice. It came from my father in law, who told me the best prep I could be doing right now was to focus on my marriage (being close and united), instead of reading a bunch of parenting books. He said our marriage would have a huge impact on our child. ...While I think this is probably wise in ways I don't even know yet, I mainly took that as a perfect excuse to spend time with my favorite person. And on the eve of week 38 of trying to implement this advice, I'm just here to say that I regret nothing.
Photo by Taylor Sporleder
I will often be there
At the moment we stand staring
At your profile
In the hotel mirror
Your body inches its center of gravity
Toward a layered eternity.
You hold one more forever in your womb.
An unending soul begun
Among the incidental wonder
Of our surrogate roles.
A story of Life and Death unfolds already
Set Uniquely against the repetitive predictability
Of room 373 down at the end of the hall.
What a fragile contemplation
Is new life,
Nothing my caffeine laced thoughts
Or power button thumbs
And screen savor eyes can't ignore for a moment.
I will often be here
At the moment I stand staring out the window at Spokane signage
Unable to sleep
Feebly considering the fate of that person- named already but not yet to us-
All we have to offer you is Alias,
Halfway house,
Transition,
Hotel room,
While some great River
Ushers you in
to Ocean you will never
See the floor
Know the scope
But never not explore
Cling to hope
And drown.
All things now for you, alive,
Trend to die.
This is the direction of birth,
From water to air
The only way in is out.
The only way up is down.
(✎E)
To love you
Is to set aside my armor
To show you: come,
Here is the deepest room
In the furthest reaches
Of my house.
Here is my heart
and how to burn it down.
I grant you the same permission
I gave her:
Hurt me
if you will.
You will
all but destroy me.
Loving you -
loving her -
is rapt stare at a fire
I did not start;
you are sacred cleansing art -
catch on the altar
and we will collaborate on this part:
flames only tend
one direction.
To know you
is an inflection
of the tongue,
one I’ve never made before,
language I cannot yet articulate.
My mind is not young like yours:
you will speak this sooner than me.
But I will exhaust each breath
inside each lung,
before I live in a world where
we do not share
common ground or grammar.
You will watch me shed tears,
hide tears,
I will startle, stutter
stammer,
but meaning
is more stubborn than my weakness.
We will both be translated
before long.
We will both be changed.
We will both be spoken strong.
We will both be rebels against God.
We will both be wrong.
(✎E)
Photo by Taylor Sporleder
The ocean between us has me remembering the first time I was out of the country on your birthday, also the Caribbean. You sent me away with poetry.
But I’m more excited to see what the closing lines of your 20’s will be like. You’ve always been good at ending a poem that seemed to be saying so many things, with a line that conveys it was really only about one very important thing. Maybe 29 isn’t normally the most memorable year for people, but I know you. I know your philosophy on finales. I know that you would say the beginning is only good if the ending is tac-sharp, intended, and arresting. And it’s not because you’ve planned it. You’ll feel your way there. You’ll stumble on it as you’re walking on no discernible path and listening to the twigs and leaves crunch under your feet. And hopefully I’m getting better at being less terrified of that. This decade has proven that the best endings always seem to find their way into your poetry.
So here’s to the long walk that led you up to this year, and to the last stanza of your twenties that will find you in the year to come.
Happy Birthday from Belize, Evan
We said goodbye to another place that tells part of our story. So grateful in goodbye for something we didn't deserve in the first place. Thankful for the sweet-smelling, well-lit and well-shadowed memories. Thankful for a great "shelter", through some of our most trying and joyful times. Thanks to the Giver of all good things.
