Thaw
Like love after grief, the creek flows under ice
and the ice there thins and darkens, takes a bluish cast,
like a terrible bruise, healing.
I don't know why I write 'love after grief."
I have never lost � you are my first,
my best, my only � only I myself am lost, am not
what once I hoped, although
you move and thaw me, daily.

We say breathtaking, but that’s not exactly it — more like being thrown from a horse, having the breath knocked out.