For Wendell

Your words are like
the house you built
by the river with
your wife—
aged oak,
smoothed with time
and care—
simple, true, and strong.

Your life was a poem
to the earth
and like your poems
taught me how to
love the earth.

(Taught me
how to love,
really)

The way you lived
is how we should:
loving deeply,
walking the earth
in all seasons,
breathing crisp air,
building and fighting
for what and whom
we love.

Oh, what a gift
humanity received
in you,
what a gift I received
to know your words.

Life is a story
you wrote,
to be joined with another,
unfolded over time,
and so you taught me
to weave my life
with the earth—
and another person—
building a story
revealed over a shared
lifetime.

And so,
knowing time as a
slow gift,
unwrapped together
as you have
unwrapped yours,
I celebrate this life
and yours,
in which you gave us
such beauty.