My love, how warm-fragrant you are in sleep; your face, in repose, is as sweet as a child’s, your breaths light and warm on my skin. I have held you all night, while you have barely stirred through all the hours.

All that is real and dear and precious exists around us in this room, with its  windows overlooking trees and mountains, flowers and scented grasses. High up in our secluded space  we have created a world where our twin souls meet and conjoin, a place of love and poetry, music and laughter, conversation and grace.

Your countenance is as peaceful as an enfolded rose. A dream-state has taken you far away, to places where there are no alarm clocks, no deadlines, no worries. In a short time we must begin the day, but for this moment we remain suspended in hushed stillness, steeped in the rose light of dawn.

Soon we will be pressed into society, drawn into its daily chatter, its tasks done and redone, its maelstrom of people, lists, and errands. As the day’s rhythms take us over, will the world we created begin to recede? Will it appear only as a fragile dream, soon to be swept out of all memory?

You are stirring beside me, opening your eyes. You smile and look at me with a loving recognition that makes me catch my breath, and then you take me in your arms. The transparent shells of our souls begin to touch and shimmer as we whisper together and smile. The alarm hasn’t gone off, we have all the time in the world, we have our entire lives ahead of us, and we have each other.

(excerpt from “Whitegate,” published © 2000)