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The Forest of Marriage

(Happy Anniversary Holly Suzanne!)

I’ve never felt sexy or young, my memory is chained like an old growth forest accumulating decay.  Remains tough to destroy.  Why would I want to?  Perhaps for you – so lovely to me – youthful, vital, your non-submissive and consistent new growth.  Your winding ways, nubile bends – how do you regenerate yourself?

I’ve no doubt my dying fertilizes and enriches, our scent expands.  Some wreckage crumbles beautifully, overgrown and softened by corruption.  But it’s not the same as planting seeds, a puppy’s not a dog.

Steep.  A word for danger and infusion.  Calamity filters through.

Seed.  It is not uncommon for your resources to sprout fresh things in me.  Renewal, come in.  I am fertile in layers.

Steep.

I’ve aged tall and long and twisted, hoary with moss and tangled by vine.  Formidable, while spongy in places.  Your green shoots pierce me, exposing my slowness and rot, my muffling stance.  You crack me open, engender new soil.  I collapse and give way, I adapt.  It’s a marriage.

I wouldn’t say “handsome,” thought at times picturesque – in a rugged way, and worn – tendriled with you growing green.  The occasional strength to bloom: I mushroom, you flower.  I fungus, you shine.  Together we develop our wonder.  Some stop and look, others stay awhile, everyone traveling through.  The coupling is not unfortunate – providing nourishment and shelter.  There’s always damage.  Having endured, still I am fragile, and you, with your gentle, tenacious roots, ever purposeful and true, yet transplanted and remaking, storms can threaten with uprooting.

We are called by one name and belong – a vast generality for incalculable kinds.  We don’t mind.  Old or new it’s still growth; what dies and what’s born construct a joined density.  I lean on you while providing shade, you straighten me as you fight for necessary light.  We are one seething thing, steamy if un-sexy, cross-generative and moist.

When the fire burns, it destroys and begins.  Gaining as much as we lose.  It takes time – symbiotic – establishing roots we combine and recover, shed and absorb, co-create and depend.  Relying on the same in our differencing.

Reaching again in each instant’s climate.

(I love you beloved wife – happy anniversary – and here’s to continual renewal and the sustenance of old growth)