I love

I was putting the finishing touches on the night's soup, made from the Thanksgiving turkey carcass and lentils, when youngest came in saying, "Cow! Cow!" which I took to mean that the cow had made her way back up from being turned out to the front fields to graze for the morning. Indeed, that was what it was. I traipsed down to let her in the back field and there were horse and donkey curious to see what the cow's report for the day was. And the chickens scratched after me to see if I had anything for them, it being their suppertime.

And the sky was clear and high blue after the most generous rains we've had in six months and great cleansing changing winds through the night. A sweatshirt was heavy enough to do chores in even though solstice approaches.

And it is this life, this very life, finishing up the soup, walking in the sun in front of the cow, having easy conversations, mutual efforts multiplied: It is this very life I was shooting for.

And after night fell, the stars in the dark moon sky shone brightly even through the bare naked trees, a dipper twinkling out from under the mountain to the northeast and planes endlessly blinking. And there are things in this life that are not a part of what I was shooting for, and things I was shooting for that are not a part of this life.

I have always been of a mind to survive, I have always had that steel resolve. I have never suffered fools gladly, and I have never broken vows lightly. I have learned to back down and yet when I do, it always leads to regret. And I refuse to live much in regret. I love.

I love. Oh, how I love. It would move mountains although it walks placidly in front of a cow & stares dumbly at twinkling stars and blinking airplanes and wants to know everything (what?) and doesn't know a thing to say. It leaps in my heart and surrounds those I love while escaping me entirely.

And after the most generous rains there is laundry to wash and hang in the chill sunshine, and long overdue mopping for the floors. And deep, steepingly hot baths to soak in, without thought of how many people can be cycled through one drawing, or saving it all for flushing.

Like the water after the most generous rains, love is not to be hoarded or measured and doled out but to be lavished upon and frolicked in and enjoyed. And recycled again. Love is wild and rapid and deep and placid.

Listening to my heart, this is what I hear: I love.

My love is the mountain. It stands before the cow, it reverberates under the hooves of the horse, it is canvas for the glow worms that mirror the stars in the sky, and is shelter to beasts and fowl and plants and trees, and sometimes it quakes.

And it is home to me and I must live fully in all of it and not only in one small cave craving its safe shallow damp coolness.

Days have passed with this same roaring in my ears, catch in my heart: I love.