Beginnings

 

Don’t start with the dawn,

start with the rise of the moon

as it lights snow on mountains, and an audience

of clouds, all so bright your way is lit

without lantern or tired streetlight glow.

 

Don’t start with your first sight of each other

across a packed dancefloor, heartbeats

matching the bass of the band, start with coming

to conscious wakefulness that first morning

after you marry, you twist your rings, pinch

 

yourself to make sure you’re not dreaming.

His arm wrapped around your waist, knees

tucked up into the bench of your bent legs,

his breath warming the back of your neck—

thus begins the next thirty, forty, fifty years.

 

Don’t start with the common car park, wander

through moors and magic, past waterfalls, dreamers

and dusty roads, exposed peat, nested ledges,

past cottages, past memories long and lasting.

Don’t start with the hunt, start with the rescue.

 

- from Down Anstruther Way by Tobi Alfier

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(Red River Review, November 2015)