The Suitor

We lie back to back. Curtains

lift and fall,

like the chest of someone sleeping.

Wind moves the leaves of the box elder;

they show their light undersides,

turning all at once

like a school of fish.

Suddenly I understand that I am happy.

For months this feeling has been coming closer, stopping

for short visits, like a timid suitor.

—Jane Kenyon,

from Otherwise: New & Selected Poems, by Graywolf Press.