For years i rang bells here,

the fifth alto being "mine."

i had long claimed it as my own.

Years of teaching had taught me to handle

the sally and how to pull,

my back arching to the swing of the bell

as it moved and stretched each vertebrae

and i felt myself pulled higher

as if to some force greater than i.

Not god necessarily, just a feeling

of goodness and all that was right,

and the scent of incense rising up

from the church, the frankinscense

so resinous and pure.

how we stuck our heads in the cupboard

and inhaled its resinous scent \

and transgressed every rule

by taking a piece here and there to inhale in the tower.

How we sat beneath the tenor, your bell,

one day and hid from the heat

and found a coolness

in the midst of summer

as we ate mint milanos

and fell in love, so strange and so foreign.

I did not know then that i would fall in love with another.

The years seemed so distant then and we lived in that moment,

cherishing each thing as i inhaled the scent of your t-shirt,

the white musk of your pale skin and watched as you moved

like a frail schoolboy, aptly climbing

across the bell frame as if you had been born to it,

a white cat, your eyes flaming and alight with desire.

I knew you then and you me.

what then of the now?

how distant we grow,

how the pull of the tide sucks us away

and so distant while you make

a new home in the heartland.

What then could be more perfect that that.

Such irony that i am not with you,

yet still in love with those early days

of our spring, our summer ~

taking the marrow of life as we

made it our own and took in

the frail scent of the linden

as each tree had been made

just for us.