For Merianna on our 12th Wedding Anniversary…
12 Cedar Roses
From the cedars in our yard,
I gathered what time had folded as
cones that had become blossoms,
spirals turning the world inward
like memory, like prayer.
12 cedar roses,
for twelve years that have ripened into ring and root.
Not perfect, no bloom is,
but resilient, fragrant with rain,
their brown petals open as if listening.
You, across the table,
the light falling through the window like grace,
half of our meal left untouched because we were talking again
about the kids, about work, about that wild dream
of a small school and church, or maybe just rest.
We have built this life
not from marble or vows,
but from mornings and errands,
from the long silence of growing beside one another,
like those cedars in our front yard,
their roots weaving underground,
trading water, sharing breath and the prayers of photosynthesis.
Each rose is a year we learned
to bend without breaking,
to find the sacred in the daily,
to let the seasons speak through us as
green, gold, bare, then green again.
When the wind moves through their branches tonight,
I will hear the rustle of your laughter,
the sound that still steadies me,
and I’ll remember:
Love is not a bloom we hold,
but the trees that keeps making them.