Twenty years married,

We are

Dreaming new dreams at midnight

Suspended over the valley

Under constellations

And stardust like freckles

In the moon-face

Of the Carolina night sky.

And in the morning,

We are

Tall, white weeds

In a garden of humble, cheerful dahlias

As we kneel on the cold, unyielding floor

No padded kneeler or gilded anything,

Just unselfconscious voices in hymns we know.

On the same day

When an inescapable hurricane rages

And willing soldiers have been slaughtered,

We are somehow given everything:

Awash in friendship, new and old

Bound to our families, here

Or gone ahead, waiting and winking.