I suppose the moment at which we realized
That we would be walking together
Was that day on the farm
When you giddily picked me the
Black-eyed Susan and presented it
Like a doe-eyed school girl, singing me:
“I’ll bring you a daisy a day, dear.”
After that, I don’t think there was ever a moment when it wasn’t plain
That we were no longer people who walk alone.
We had found our match — or it had found us —
And the rest was nothing more than the ongoing discovery
Of how it would play out.
There was nothing to be worked out.
Nothing to be solved.
Nothing to be negotiated.
We just were.
And that would do just fine.
And we made our vows and kept them—
These twenty years now —
And still we walk together,
Discussing most everything, eventually.
And having since multiplied ourselves
Into a threesome that is so much fuller
Than the pair could ever have understood
Ahead of time,
We are now so much more than before,
And I do think that surprises us still
From time to time as we realize
Our generations playing out their beginnings before us.
And still we discover,
As now aging and death and whatever lies beyond
Draw ever closer, reminding us of
What is important
And what is not,
And driving those humbly-helpless good hopes for James’ watch —
Hopes for a future that we know will be properly out of our hands.
And we see this ugly-beautiful world
Ever more for what it is, it seems.
And we bear up under its tests, we think,
Striving to be ever better people
As we navigate the tides of those who do not
And enjoy the company of those few who do.
And we understand “for richer, or poorer”,
Having seen both sides for ourselves,
Though it still doesn’t seem the point of it all,
As it does for many.
And in all this lies the question
Of whether everything is as we have supposed it to be —
Of whether we have got it right in our minds,
And whether we shall discover that what lies beyond
Is as we have read and figured —
And whether what has seemed worth doing
Was really worth doing.
And the promise of regeneration in it all is astounding —
That we should fly
And discover
And see the vindication
Of what is right and just and true in its every facet —
That this book should come to its close
And another should be opened.
And then, it seems, we shall have run our course
And the fatigue shall give way
To new energies unbounded
And to a new sense of things
We would not understand even if we were told,
Except that we should see it for ourselves.
And we shall cross that hill
Into that new morning,
Its endlessness clear from the beginning,
And it’s Champion on his throne
And all right being with his world.
And we will see that we were right to believe —
That goodness is not just a dream —
That truth does exist
That we have not been insane —
And that people can change —
And that we have done it ourselves,
However clumsily, we shall see.
And I believe we’ll see a certain beauty in how it will come back to that moment
When we began to walk together —
When it just seemed right that that’s how it should be —
And it was right.
And how could this not have been a gift for us,
That I should find you, and you should find me,
And that we might —
Both being headed in the same direction anyway —
Have chanced to walk here together?
