Thirty years of summer skies

Years before our Italian petimus,
In the corridor of Woodend Hospital
You passed me by.
I was more than half-melted already.

Open-hearted and open-handed
you boldly met me halfway,
more than halfway.

Thirty summers have faded,
since those Woodend days in the DOME
[the Department of Medicine for the Elderly].
Still you hold my hand
and take me to Eden.

Yesterday, on a quiet Sunday in June
you took me to another Eden:
to the brig that spans the Deveron, at Alvah.

You guided me there by a forgotten byway,
lined, baith sides, by majestic, ancient and glorious trees.
We stopped, repeatedly, to read almost indecipherable aboroglyphs
carved into the tree trunks by
young lovers of yesteryears.

And then, through light-dappled leaves,
in the freshest of green,
almost transparently so,
the Brig o’ Alvah.
What a wonder.
A wonder in any world!

There together,
standing on the bridge,
with the river flowing below us
here and there sparkling,
in quiet pools, outwith the eddies,
we could see brief reflections of the sky above us.
The immeasurably deep sky.