<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A Lover’s Quarrel</p><div class=""><br class=""></div><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">There are some to whom a place means nothing,<br class="">for whom the lazy zeroes <br class="">a goshawk carves across the sky<br class="">are nothing,<br class="">for whom a home is something one can buy.<br class="">I have long wanted to say, <br class="">just once before I die, <br class="">I am home.</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">When I remember the sound of my true country,<br class="">I hear winds<br class="">high up in the evergreens, the soft snore <br class="">of surf, far off, on a wintry day,<br class="">the half-garbled song of finches <br class="">darting off through alder <br class="">on a summer day.</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Lust does not <br class="">fatigue the soul, I say. This wind, <br class="">these ever- green trees, this little bird of the spirit— <br class="">this is the shape, the place of my desire. I’m free<br class="">as a fish or a stone.<br class="">—</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Don’t tell me about the seasons in the East, don’t talk to me <br class="">about eternal California summer. <br class="">It’s enough to have <br class="">a few days naked <br class="">among three hundred kinds of rain.</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In its little plastic pot on the high sill, <br class="">the African violet <br class="">grows away from the place <br class="">the sun last was, its fuzzy leaves <br class="">leaning out in little curtsies.</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It, too, has had enough <br class="">of the sun. I love the sound of a storm</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">without thunder, the way winds <br class="">slow, trees darken, heavy clouds <br class="">rumbling so softly <br class="">you must close your eyes to listen:</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">then the blotch, blotch <br class="">of big drops plunketing through the leaves.<br class="">—</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It is difficult,<br class="">this being a stranger on earth. <br class="">Why, I’ve seen pilgrims come <br class="">and tear away at blackberry vines <br class="">with everything that’s in them, I’ve seen them <br class="">heap their anger <br class="">up against a tree <br class="">and curse these swollen skies.</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">What’s this? —a mountain beaver <br class="">no bigger than a newborn mouse <br class="">curled in my palm, <br class="">an osprey curling over tide pools and lifting <br class="">toward the trees, a wind at dusk<br class="">hollow in the hollows of the eves, <br class="">a wind over waves <br class="">cooling sand crabs washed up along the beach.</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Each thing, closely seen, <br class="">appears more strange<br class="">than before: the shape of my desire <br class="">is huge, vague, <br class="">full of many things <br class="">commingling—</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">dying bees among the dying flowers; <br class="">winter rain and the smoke it brings.</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">If it fills me with longing, <br class="">it is only because <br class="">we are like the rain, falling, <br class="">falling through our own most secret being,<br class="">through a world of not-knowing. <br class="">—</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At the end of the day, <br class="">I come, finally, <br class="">to myself, I return to the strange sounds of a man <br class="">who wants to speak <br class="">with stones, with the hard crust of earth. <br class="">But nothing listens.</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">When the sea hammers the sea wall, <br class="">I’m dumb. <br class="">When the nighthawks bleat at dusk, I’m drunk <br class="">on the sadness of their songs. <br class="">When the moon is so close <br class="">you can almost reach it through the trees, <br class="">I’m frozen, I’m blind, <br class="">or I’m gone.</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Fish, bird, stone, there’s something <br class="">I can’t know, but know the same: <br class="">I hear the rain inside me <br class="">only to look up<br class="">into a bitter sun.</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">What do we listen to, what do we think <br class="">we hear? The sound <br class="">of sea walls crumbling,<br class="">a little bird with hunger in its song: <br class="">You should have known! You should have known!<br class="">—</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Like any Nootka rose,<br class="">I know there are some <br class="">for whom a place is nothing. Like the wild rose, <br class="">like the tide and the day, <br class="">we come, go, or stay <br class="">according to a whim.</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It is enough, perhaps, <br class="">to say, We live here.<br class="">And let it go at that.</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">This wind lets go <br class="">of everything it touches. <br class="">I long to hold the wind.</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">I’d kiss a fish <br class="">and love a stone <br class="">and marry this winter rain</p><p class="" style="margin: 6px 0px 0px; display: inline; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; widows: 2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">if I could persuade this battered earth <br class="">to let me make it home.</p><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Robert Greenway</div></body></html>