Floodplain

All spring I was driving

Every river swollen with rain, every stream a torrent

Over the highway bridges that run high across the plains, flooded

“Half of the Maritimes,” they say, “is running this way.”

I don’t expect your love to be like mine

I trust you to know your own mind. As I know mine

Could it really be so effortless

All in my sight, many hillsides –

Green and black and distant, and rivers serpentine, glinting

I know there’s so much it just can’t mean – you and me

Still caught up in heartache and grief

Yet to come, yet to cease

I feel like I’m seeing double, all joy and all trouble

My friends say, “be careful,” or “be gracious,” “glad,” or “thoughtful”;

“don’t move too fast”; “don’t let it pass you by.”

But I don’t expect your love to be like mine

I trust you to know your own mind. As I know mine