Marriage

Unmapped

/ JRLonas / Leave a comment

“Some are born in their place, some find it, some realize after long searching that the place they left is the one they have been searching for. But whatever their relation to it, it is made a place only by slow accrual, like a coral reef.”
—Wallace Stegner

You were floating by fast when I caught you,
Gave you a place to anchor and watched you
Begin to call your home into being.
All you needed for it you brought with you,
So I left you to it, and before I knew it,
We were cemented together here,
Securely as the roots of the mountains.

I wonder where you came from and
Where you might have gone without me.
I wonder what great ships you could
Have beached somewhere else, though who knows
What our children’s children might see
Come to pass right here, in this place
Where we’ve been set, accreting life.

A little carbon and calcium
Is all it takes to move heaven and earth
Around ourselves and find a niche that works,
Amid vast, acidifying oceans.
But of all the polyps in all the reefs
In all the world, just this spot was prepared
For your unmapped geography of hope.

Image: Crystalline Iceplant, Santa Barbara County, Calif., June 2019.

Marriage, or Talking to Myself

/ JRLonas / Leave a comment

The Bible says
   A man and his wife
      Become one flesh and that
         Must include the brain as well as
      The heart and all the rest
   Perhaps this is why
Our eyes always
   Meet in mutual
      Recognition of the
         Crude cruel funny and sad and
      Why we laugh and cry at
   The same time maybe
That’s why we have
   Ended up liking
      All the same foods and same
         Movies and music and have
      Generally become
   Inseparable
Not in the so
   Sappy romantic
      Sense which usually
         Is meant by that word but just
      A simple statement of
   The fact that after
So many years
   There really isn’t
      A distinctive you and
         Me and even when you’re not
      Here you don’t won’t rub off
   This is probably
Why most of the
   fights that we’ve had with
      Each other in truth have
         Been fights with myself steady
      Internal dialogue
   That slowly flows down
To acceptance
   Pooling into faith
      In jumped-to conclusions
         And a brave face toward the world.

Image: Tide Pools, Beaufort County, S.C., September 2019.

Notes from Un-Sovereignty

/ JRLonas / Leave a comment

Truly, truly, I say to you, when you
Were young, you used to dress yourself and walk
Wherever you wanted, but when you’re old,
You will stretch out your hands, and another
Will dress you and carry you where you do
Not, in the very slightest, want to go.

So Christ said to Peter, then bid him go.
That goes for him, we reason, But not you.
It’s fine to call him out, but please don’t do
Anything to upset plans as we walk
Head-high, knee-deep, this path or another,
No thought of stumbling, falling as though old.

All things, once fresh, grow stale, pale, cheap and old
to youth, who only ever want to go.
Not for us, attending to another,
To listen, learn, to sort out me from you.
Patience is anathema. Why not walk
When told to sit? Why walk? Running will do.

It’s all well and good, doing what we do.
I’ll sleep when I’m dead. I’ll die when I’m old.
Until one day, hand in hand, we two walk,
Without a care for where all this might go.
My run inevitably stops for you;
One soul, beneath the weight of another.

But are we to carry one another
From strength to strength as lovers? Say “I do”;
Wait, spent, for the same words to come from you?
If we must, let us together grow old.
What you want, I give. Where you lead, I go.
Cradle to altar is not far to walk.

Back again, from altar to cradle walk
The two, from whose lives has come another,
Crying, You may not, now or ever, go
Where you want to go. Neither may you do
What you wish to do. I’m young, and you’re old.
Only on paper I belong to you!

To walk from dust to dust is what we do;
In this life or another, whether old
Or young, we go. I think I’ll go with you.

Photo: Path with Beeches, Reflection Riding Arboretum, Chattanooga, Tenn., November 2017.