Cle Elum Reconsidered
It’s kind of like a love affair.
When we’re apart we long to be together.
When we’re together, the realities of the relationship begin to set in.
But we keep coming back to this house in Cle Elum,
and we keep imagining a life together.
And of course this life is perfect.
We walk all around it. We sit on the steps. We talk.
Certainly the winters here are harsh,
spring is always late in arriving, and the days are slow to warm.
But in the summer when the dark earth radiates the heat of the day
and the sweet, pungent smell of tall grass fills the air,
and when the autumn nights beckon with a thousand stars,
it’s a place I could come to call home.
I think I love this place for everything it will never be.
It’s a promise of a simple life,
a place to pursue dreams, to write poetry,
to build bird houses and spirit shrines,
to talk, and sing, and grow old.
It’s a place to take long walks,
to nurture gardens and each other,
to learn and ponder and love and remember.
It’s a place that lets us embrace everything that we hope
and all that we dream, and allows us to believe
that those things are not only possible
but also as natural, as Walt Whitman tells us,
as leaves of grass.
But Cathy’s knee doesn’t like the cold,
and Aaron’s cane doesn’t like the snow,
so we’re still not ready to make a commitment.
__________
so we’re still not ready to make a commitment.
__________
