I remember the first time
He said he loved me.
We lay, like a painting,
Under that evergreen pecan tree, and
The sun caught the leaves in its golden hands—
They shook, gently, with a susurrus in the late afternoon breeze
And blushed a bright green, like panes in a stain glass window
Through which the sunlight pours itself with reverence.
He brushed my thick, tussled hair behind my ear
And kissed me, again,
While the branches swayed and sang
Over our heads.
He murmured to me a phrase
Which his virgin lips had not yet uttered before—
That phrase which is everything,
And I felt the tree’s solid roots under my back.
It held us in its knotted feelers
And protected us under its musical canopy—
We fell, blessedly, into its kingdom
And never cared to emerge again.