My labored breathing carries through the woods like a child’s laughter. The consistent pounding in my chest augments the barely perceptible reverberations of summer.

The skeletal branches of the trees bend just short of snapping. Their spines creak in the biting wind. The bright-white silence of death fills the moments of emptiness, a constant contrast to the rare instance of life.

The elusive quiet always returns, but there is no fear in the woods.

You were not, and now you have been.
A novel existence stitched into the present
in a single moment that is now our past
and also your past, to be remembered.

You were not, and now your future is always arriving.
An abundant life placed in the stream of time
which is always with us, but mysterious,
never to be known, purely to be undergone.  

You were not, and now you are.
A dignified presence placed among us,
created from the essence of us
yet separate from us, to be encountered.

For Love only grows from the present moment, in the presence of Another.

We walked two paths in late September. The green leaves of the trees, in their last days, prepared for the end. We wished their glorious death would come sooner and last longer.

We walked the first path in the morning. The red-brown riffles to our left whispered stories of a thousand autumns come and gone. We were thankful for the twenty-seven you’ve lived.

We walked the second path at noon. The abandoned railroad ties shook with the memory of train blasts and younger days. We laughed about mystery-food birthday parties.

Without leaving the downy chair  
you and I trek through the woods and the meadows,
down the lane, across the river and over the hills.

We visit the silence above the sea  
where the moon starts its journey across the sky.
The lights on the ships extinguish
as they float into the big dark night,  
rocking rhythmically atop the never-ending waves.

When you’re almost too sleepy to think anymore,
as I usher you gently into the day’s end,
My eyes float above the last words.

And though I recite them to you,  
it would be wrong to call it reading,
for the words are in my heart—
“I love you right up to the moon, and back.”