I wonder sometimes
in the deepest recess of the night
if we had met before you’d safely married,
had met when we were inches younger,
before we knew each other,
would we have loved,
could we have been best brothers through that love?

Would love have overwhelmed, even undone us,
if we’d met anywhere but close-­watched gardens,
had felt the canopy glow forbidden fruit trees shed,
allowed our hands to touch the way our eyes did?

Could we have loved?

_

Peregrine is a poet learning to spread wide his wings all of a gradual sudden. He nests in the eaves and breathes warm on the wind and feasts in the vast, dappled world.