nineteen

Welcome to our new home.
Nineteen feels both fresh and old.

Let me compose simply
to begin with
since we began simply.

You are
the familiar in the new
and the new in the familiar;
you catch my breath when I’m still
and catch my breath when I’ve run too long;
you are both
as wind is to flag
and banner is to swift breeze,
body and soul
to my heart and arms.

Let mine be likewise.

You are my true homeland
in this native country that
has become foreign,
your arms my well and fence
in the wilderness.

Nineteen is twenty with
promise,
hope,
and faith.

And faith is acting as if

I have just kissed you
warm
that first winter we met
on the frozen lake
under that moon
whose beauty paled and pales
in comparison to yours, my tide,

as if
I’ve just married you,
vowed
before God and creation
never to stray,
to love and cherish
you always.

Nineteen is just a beginning
because nineteen is never always.
Today is but a shy twenty.
Make me bolder.
Let me start loving you
as if yesterday never happened
and today is all we have
and tomorrow is a promise,
full of promise
awaiting fulfillment,
empty but
destined,
like the thawing lake
is fated to fill afresh.

Let those virgin lips become
daily sacrament,
like Scripture, studied with my heart,
my arms around your body and
yours around mine.

Lift the veil
on a new year;
let’s be newlyweds
our nineteenth together.

Stand and blow: I’ll be your flag.
Or, if you like, you be the standard
and I’ll promise a gust and a battle.
Either way,
there is much to be learned,
color, storm and post.

These are my new old promises
on our nineteenth.
This is nineteen’s devotion.
Let our love be both simple and rich.