life could afford, everything and more.
He sat at his desk in the study and looked out the window into the gloaming as it settled over Baxter Park. Cynthia was working on an illustration that had to go out tomorrow by FedEx, or he would have been at her side, as magnetized to her living presence as his grocery list to the refrigerator.
He drummed his fingers on the desktop.
He didn’t want to work on his sermon. He didn’t want to take a shower and crawl into bed with a wellloved book from his well-stocked shelves, and he most certainly did not want to turn on the TV and have the clamor pour into this quiet place like some foul Niagara. He was unable to think of anything he wanted to do; there was no seduction in any of the usual pursuits.
Aha. His fingers grew still upon the desktop.
There it was, plain as day:
He wanted to record, somehow, the joy of this breathless thing that had swept him up and overpowered and mesmerized him. Perhaps for most people, people who had been in love again and again, it would not be such a beauteous experience, but it was new to him and dazzling. Yet even in its newness, he felt it slipping away, becoming part of a personal history in which the nuances, the shading, would be lost forever; buried within the consciousness, yes, but paled by time, and then, he feared, vanished altogether.
He opened the desk drawer and took out a writing pad and one of the commercial pens he’d grown to prefer. Though the ink had a noxious odor, he liked the way it flowed onto the page—black, bold, and able.
He knew now what his soul was driving him to. He knew, and he liked the idea immensely.
He would write a poem.
In it, he would tell her everything, he would confess the all of his love, which, by its great and monumental force, had heretofore rendered him dumb as a mackerel.
With her, he experienced a galaxy . . . no, an entire universe of feelings, yet they continually displayed themselves as the western portion of the state of Rhode Island:
YouarebeautifultomeIshallloveyoueternallywillyou marrymeandmakemethehappiestmanwhoeverdrewbreath, period, end of declaration.
He was amazed at how far he’d gotten with this extraordinary woman by the utterance of the most rudimentary expressions of love, all of them sincere beyond measure, and yet, they were words too simple and words too few; not once had they been equal to the character, the beauty, or the spirit of the one to whom they were addressed.
He knew, now, why people wanted to shout from rooftops, yet he couldn’t imagine it to have great effect, in the end. One would clamber onto the roof and, teetering on some gable or chimney pot, bellow until one was hoarse as a bullfrog, “I love! I love!”
And what would people on the street do? They would look up, they would shrug, they would roll their eyes, they would say:
So?
He bounded happily from the chair and went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Clearly, shouting from the rooftops had been a fleeting thing in the history of the lovestruck, not long enjoyed as a certified expression of ardor. Indeed, what had done the trick each and every time? Poetry! And history had proved it!
“ ‘I love thee,’ ” he recited as he filled the kettle, “ ‘. . . to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight . . . I love thee freely, as men strive for Right . . .’ ”
There! That was getting down to it. The only problem was that E. B. Browning had already written it.
He stood musing by the stove in a kind of fog that made him forget momentarily where he was and what he was up to, until the kettle whistled and he awoke and found himself oddly joyful to be dropping the bags into the teapot and pouring the steaming water therein.
He clamped the lid on the pot and, leaving it to the business of steeping, returned to the study and visited his bookshelves. He couldn’t readily put his hand on a volume of love poetry, but surely he’d find something here to spark a
He sat at his desk in the study and looked out the window into the gloaming as it settled over Baxter Park. Cynthia was working on an illustration that had to go out tomorrow by FedEx, or he would have been at her side, as magnetized to her living presence as his grocery list to the refrigerator.
He drummed his fingers on the desktop.
He didn’t want to work on his sermon. He didn’t want to take a shower and crawl into bed with a wellloved book from his well-stocked shelves, and he most certainly did not want to turn on the TV and have the clamor pour into this quiet place like some foul Niagara. He was unable to think of anything he wanted to do; there was no seduction in any of the usual pursuits.
Aha. His fingers grew still upon the desktop.
There it was, plain as day:
He wanted to record, somehow, the joy of this breathless thing that had swept him up and overpowered and mesmerized him. Perhaps for most people, people who had been in love again and again, it would not be such a beauteous experience, but it was new to him and dazzling. Yet even in its newness, he felt it slipping away, becoming part of a personal history in which the nuances, the shading, would be lost forever; buried within the consciousness, yes, but paled by time, and then, he feared, vanished altogether.
He opened the desk drawer and took out a writing pad and one of the commercial pens he’d grown to prefer. Though the ink had a noxious odor, he liked the way it flowed onto the page—black, bold, and able.
He knew now what his soul was driving him to. He knew, and he liked the idea immensely.
He would write a poem.
In it, he would tell her everything, he would confess the all of his love, which, by its great and monumental force, had heretofore rendered him dumb as a mackerel.
With her, he experienced a galaxy . . . no, an entire universe of feelings, yet they continually displayed themselves as the western portion of the state of Rhode Island:
YouarebeautifultomeIshallloveyoueternallywillyou marrymeandmakemethehappiestmanwhoeverdrewbreath, period, end of declaration.
He was amazed at how far he’d gotten with this extraordinary woman by the utterance of the most rudimentary expressions of love, all of them sincere beyond measure, and yet, they were words too simple and words too few; not once had they been equal to the character, the beauty, or the spirit of the one to whom they were addressed.
He knew, now, why people wanted to shout from rooftops, yet he couldn’t imagine it to have great effect, in the end. One would clamber onto the roof and, teetering on some gable or chimney pot, bellow until one was hoarse as a bullfrog, “I love! I love!”
And what would people on the street do? They would look up, they would shrug, they would roll their eyes, they would say:
So?
He bounded happily from the chair and went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Clearly, shouting from the rooftops had been a fleeting thing in the history of the lovestruck, not long enjoyed as a certified expression of ardor. Indeed, what had done the trick each and every time? Poetry! And history had proved it!
“ ‘I love thee,’ ” he recited as he filled the kettle, “ ‘. . . to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight . . . I love thee freely, as men strive for Right . . .’ ”
There! That was getting down to it. The only problem was that E. B. Browning had already written it.
He stood musing by the stove in a kind of fog that made him forget momentarily where he was and what he was up to, until the kettle whistled and he awoke and found himself oddly joyful to be dropping the bags into the teapot and pouring the steaming water therein.
He clamped the lid on the pot and, leaving it to the business of steeping, returned to the study and visited his bookshelves. He couldn’t readily put his hand on a volume of love poetry, but surely he’d find something here to spark a
Similar Books
