Elysium

We went where we always go -

the place where the telephone lines shoot
off into the distance,
cutting a wide swath through rich vegetation.
It's the place I always went to imagine -
thoughts rushing down the lines,
out to the horizon and beyond, to the mystery of the future.
It's the place we'd leave notes to each other
tucked away shyly under rocks or in folds of grey bark,
sometimes slipped in with forest violets,
tiny and pristine.
It's the place I always thought I'd kiss you first -
a shadow of a fate
sweetly fulfilled.

Tonight, this place holds all the wonder of dreams.

The earth swells greenly with mystery and the flush of life.
The air, still holding the heat of the day,
begins to catch and cup the scent of nighttime,
that dusky smell of dirt and dew and moon-blooming flowers.

We stand,
shoulder to shoulder,
soul to soul,
and watch the firebugs flicker to life around us.
They emerge like a deep abiding magic,
a score more every minute,
pulsing like the lights of little lives, which blaze into existence and then shudder out
again.

They circle, most thickly, near to the tree we planted
years ago,
before our lips had touched -
the small frail tree with the white ribbon,
whose buds we kiss in awe
every year it makes it through the winter.

Tonight this is the place all souls return to,
after shucking off the peeling skin of life -
glowing dots, all drawn together,
whirling slowly in the green thickness and dew.

We kiss for the thousandth time
and it's a true first kiss,
with all the fragile scrubbing newness of rainstorms,
flower buds, and birth. We are
bare,
skin to skin
flame to flame,
swarmed up with the pulsing glow surrounding us -

we are bright spots
in a field of green.