This Is It
Brandon Cook
The morning was so enclosed in cold, how could we know that
The farmer’s market was open or that so many brave souls—faithful or loyal or dumb, or perhaps just desperate to sell their wares—would show up there?
When two would have been too many
Yet we chose to keep the faith ourselves and made our way, in our own obeisance (since rituals keep us sane), down the lane and into the inviting smiles, which dutifully hid their own surprise, as we all eyed each other knowingly:
Isn't it plain that we are the wild ones, and that we defy all odds?
It was all we could do to find our steps along the wet earth, though the trees that stood at sentry to usher us through the icy depths
Their own breath, should they find it, would have frozen on the air, no doubt, like mist, and the way their lithe
limbs slendered out unto their ends, encased in frozen water, was like Belle's rose—
All the world perfectly frozen, as a warning to all live things:
To rush today for no thing
Except
I did not see that it was beauty, so fixated on each footfall above the squelching mud, until
I sensed you'd stopped and turning, saw you, as if in worship before an icon or the very Lord of hosts,
That bright invitation of smile on your face, your hand splayed satisfied on your hips, as you said,
"Yeah...this is it"
Turning, I, too, saw the beauty that was already everywhere
As we stopped, while snow fell down
Already there
Already everywhere, in the flood
In the bright gold thread holding the morning together
Warm like fresh-baked bread
The body and the blood