I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
[from Robert Frost�s Birches]
If I close my eyes in just this moment, I see first the ocean and then Emi. The ocean at Land�s End in Maine, tempestuous and swollen against the rocks that looked, at first glance, like petrified wood. Standing high up on the rocks, I watched seagulls fight the wind. I watched the clouds let loose rain that came like mist to my face, and I felt myself warm against the gray-blueness of that day. With each crash of surf against the shore, I breathed more deeply, inhaling the intoxicating smell that is the ocean; that is the ocean on a rainy autumn evening in Maine. For once, the ocean did not frighten me. I wanted to fall into it. To let it caress my body with its strength, with its power. To take my body into the wet passion of the earth as if I belonged to sea instead of land.
But Emi was there to catch my hands when my own passion took me too close to the edge.
She kissed my forehead and my cheeks with her red, red mouth, her face covered with wetness, as if she had pleasured the sky before returning to me. Standing high up on the rocks, we pressed our bodies into each other�s, warming our chilled hands against warmer skin hid under clothes. This is where she�s meant to be; I thought to myself, her eyes are the color of this seascape on this day.
And if I close my eyes in this moment, I see first the wooded mountains of Maine and then Emily. Laced in and out of the woods, reaching for the road, reaching for us, as if we could caress them straight once more, were birch trees. Birch trees, with their white shedding bark and dark underscores framed the fall foliage with the simplicity of a pair of lips encircling a nipple. I felt, as Emi drove through the curvy, sunlit roads, that I would combust with my inability to put in words what my body felt for the birch trees bending towards us and the leaves slowly dying in bursts of color.
But just as I was beginning to lose myself in words unsaid, Emily brought me to her voice.
She would reach for my hand and pull it to her lap and begin another story of her life. This is where� And as I listened, I�d look out over the mountains, feeling my hand in hers, feeling our hands fit as perfectly as the trees wrapped around one another, and I would sigh. I would wonder what it must be like to be from this place of so much beauty. What it would be to have Maine as your backyard. To have a heart as colorful as the mountains in front of us, and as if in answer, Emi laughed and brought my hand up to her lips. I am so in love with this woman, I thought.
And even now, if I close my eyes in this moment, I see first a glacial pond and then Emi Beth in the hours of the approaching sunset. If I take you to my most favorite place on earth, will you like it? Promise? Pulling up to the cabin that her grandfather built, walking to the lake, surrounded by mountains, highlighted by the setting sun, I had to bite my lip to keep from weeping at the breadth of beauty before me. I had never seen such blue. I had never felt such immensity in the stillness of water. I have never felt embraced by a setting so much as I did in that moment, standing at the end of the dock, with a birch tree to my left and the sun to my right and the pond stretched out, rippling before me.
And as I stood there, wondering how I could break the spell that froze me to that spot, Emi Beth called me to her.
And I went. And she was there, sitting on the top of a picnic table, tired and smiling, content. Do you like it? Kissing her forehead, and then her cheeks, the tip of her nose, resting my lips on top of hers, feeling her arms embrace me, all I knew is that I didn�t want to leave life.