Hallmark Moment

What card can house this love,
this earth-mover, bulldozer of a love,
this axis-shifting love
that won't lie pressed between two sheets of paper
like a tamed wildflower
dry and faded,
a parody of the riot of colour that dotted the hillside.
No this love won't lie still
Won't behave
but runs through dappled meadows on a summer afternoon
ripe for exploring and adventure
This love won't be contained in a helium balloon with a pre-thought sentiment
nor a heart-shaped box
but bursts from the confines like a summer storm
hot and unpredictable
This love is laughter in church and kissing in the bright sun
It is the space between breaths
the shadowed edge of the garden where the forest becomes
where we become and have always been.
Will always be.
This love. This day.

Winter Fences of Colorado

Fences make good neighbours, he said. But these fences had moved beyond the politeness of bounderies and borders and slipped into the realm of art, arcing studded lines across the white curving fields of Colorado's winter landscape. These  winter fences more form than function, breaking whitescapes into foreground and background, hither and yonder, far away and fading into infinity, specs tracing a line into the foothills.

And why not? What use these barriers thrown up against the unlikely advance of feet in January's impassable pastures? And who would turn away a chance visitor in long dark nights? Who could close the door and turn away from the warmth of an encounter to embrace the cold loneliness and muffled silence of yet another night? What fortification against the onslaught of the coming storm - there in the clouds, breaching the headlands of the mountain.