our country of marriage

Yesterday marked the twentieth anniversary of Ginger's and my engagement. We celebrated with a quick trip to Boston (my first since we moved), including a Sox game and a meal at the Hard Rock, which is where we ate on August 12, 1989 (except at the one in Dallas, which is no more). For our anniversary, Ginger gave me a "Story People" drawing that says,

"You're the strangest person I ever met," she said
and I said, "You, too," and we decided to know each other a long time.

And we are having a great time together.

We are more together than we know,
how else could we keep discovering
we are more together than we thought?
Wendell Berry, “The Country of Marriage”

Our Country of Marriage

We walked the streets of Boston again –
the streets where we grew together,
grew up together, and found our
footprints still etched in the sidewalks,
even though we have moved away.

Here’s how I remember it:
We were new to the city and still
fairly new to one another.
I was standing on the inbound platform
at North Station, when it was still
an elevated track. When the train I
wasn’t waiting for pulled away, I saw
you standing on the outbound side,
my most familiar and favorite face
shining among the shadowed crowd.
You saw me at the same time and
you smiled the surprise that left
my heart both bright and breathless.

We have good reasons we no longer
live where we can walk across the
Common, or smell the sea salt
though summer’s open windows.
Still, the geography of the heart
holds our history in the mountains
of memories, the countless coffee
shops from Newbury to Ninth,
the string of sunsets and stories
that run like the Appalachian Trail
across our country of marriage
to where the light shines in different
windows and Schnauzers still woof
their welcome when we come home.

I’m proud to be a citizen of
our country of love and laughter,
this land we have discovered together
and, even now far from its frontier,
this land still full of the discovery
of what it means to love for a lifetime.

Peace,
Milton