If I was in love before it was a spring shower that collected
On the windows in the morning
Shortly dried by midday sunlight
And if I was in love before it was stream I forded barefoot
On an easy backwoods trail
With no destination but experience
If I was in love before it was a stormy Sunday at the ocean
Too cold to step in tidepools
Observing from a distance
And if this is love right now
It is a downpour wild and soaking
Rolling thunder singing to me
As I wander, wet and willing
And it’s the mighty Columbia river
That I declined to enter in my childhood
For fear that it would steal me
If this is love I am riding currents
Of the wild and reckless ocean
And I’ve long since left the shoreline
With no plans to swim back to it

Should she ever wonder
Where my mind would wander
When I stare intently at her
Drifting off to quiet places
In the back of my conscious center
I would smile and say she’s lovely
Or I am watching her lips
Speak to me
How I know the sound of her voice
Like a lullaby from childhood
Has she always been here with me?
Living in my imagination
A piece of my existence
That I stumbled upon
So lucky
I would tell her I am mapping
The tip of her nose to her lashes
Memorizing her face fully
Should it ever leave my presence
Should she ever depart from me
And my world turns dark and lonely
I’ll hold her perfect poised persona
In my consciousness forever
The gentle tumbling water
She embodies with her sweet
zodiac placement cancer
Thunder, showers, snow and storming
An earthly angel widely wandering
I’ll gladly go there with her
To the end of the running river
That composes her heart’s rhythm
And I’ll lie with her in her coffin
Sweetly laid to rest together
My wild and wondrous winter Woman