The Size of Loneliness

We are mapping the beds, their spring,

their early summer bloom, in this garden

which will be our last, my husband and I.

The first blossom on the violet clematis is open,

abloom. Two yellow portulaca. A trio of birds

fly through the garden, sudden, low, too rapid

for me to see what they are. I’m struggling, sad.

My husband looks old suddenly: his stoop, his

slow walk. Spring comes this year with fierce

cold, unrelenting, imperative winds. The crocus

push up, shivering. A friend writes that once,

her husband gravely ill, she felt “a vast loneliness.”

I am gauging the size of loneliness. Some times

I feel small pockets of it, at others I can hold it

in my hand, a pebble. I’ve found it in the heart

of a succulent piece of fruit, a pit, absolute:

it is the stone at the center of my rich days.

In the garden, anemone around the willow

tree are starting to open. The hellebore bloom,

downward-facing. Daffodils up all over, tulips,

lilies. My happiness is overwhelmingly bound

up with my husband, his presence. Together

we map all the beds, sketch in the spring bulbs

on his template. Purple clematis blossoming,

now the rosy one in the driveway, its blooms

gems, smaller than I’d imagined their being.

In a dream, my marriage is breaking up, my

husband’s forgotten something important

to me, a birthday, anniversary? The sheaf

of red roses I’m holding begins to shed petals.

Will a morning ever come when waking up

at daybreak I don’t immediately check to

make sure my husband is breathing, alive,

a morning when he’s here with me in bed and

that’s not what I first think of? I’d settle for

as many mornings as I can imagine of checking

as long as he’s still here, still with me. Now

that the beds are mapped, we plan where to

plant bulbs this fall, daffodils, lilies, small

tulips, the wild ones I love. The loneliness

I am feeling this morning is the size of

those bulbs, round smooth orbs I could

hold in my fist, each full of the future.