The last light of a July evening drained into the streets below:
My love and I had hard things to say and hear, and we sat over wine, faltering, picking our words carefully.
The afternoon before I had lain across my bed and my cat leapt up to lie alongside me, purring and slowly growing dozy.
By this ritual I could clear some clutter from my baroque brain.
And into that brief vacancy the image of a horse cantered, coming straight to me, and I knew it brought hard talk and hurt and fear.
How did we do?
A medium job, which is well above average.
But because she had opened her heart to me as far as she did,
I saw her fierce privacy, like a gnarled, luxuriant tree all hung with disappointments, and I knew that to love her I must love the tree and the nothing it cares for toe.
