The High Places

Judy's kitchen table in the spring of 2014, daffodil time

***
Those Eternally Linked Lives 2 March 5, 2017

You agreed: our story/our history
should be told. I wanted to give you
my heart whole, and I did. I couldn’t
forget the high places where we rested
and were one, each having a wing. You
left the whole story to me. I held back
until now. If we soared, we also lost
ourselves in the tangled skein of anger,
scorn, tears, deadly silence. You could
silence me, whose one great need was
to speak. Since I’m alone now, I’m free
to tell it all: the agony and loss of
paradise, and its rediscovery. We were
fools, yet wiser than everyone around
us, living our lives as if we were one
bird, one fight, with only one home,
and that always together. The love
has outlasted your death. I’m aging
but I’m speaking. Once you would 
have frowned at what I’m telling, 
but now, from your new place of

contemplation, you’re smiling.