Now in the dark of early morning
it all begins to come clear—
the spoons in their drawer slots,
the flashlight where it might be needed,
my wife still asleep in our bed.

We moved here from 7 climates away
not knowing if our transplanted needs
could accept the acid soil and the sweet sun.
But in a week the house began to live,
its faucets standing like Elizabethan servants
ready to pour out the water of many uses,
the electric outlets eager to inspire tools,
the heating here for the easy asking.

Taken alone, all this is not a marriage,
but begun in such a place,
like a plant in the loam of lust,
it aspires to more, and it finds more as it rises
into the air, the light, the admiration.

We water it with our losses, prune it
lightly with our respect for its future,
and cater to its needs with our own need
for mercy projected onto it as a friend.
—

John J. Brugaletta was editor/publisher of South Coast Poetry Journal, has had two volumes of his poems published, and lives in Northern California with his wife and several bears.