A poplar has fallen across the path,
and as I climb over I say out loud:
I'm engaged to be married.

The last time I said those words
was 1968 and I was twenty, green and
leafy. From my path I hear a thrush

tut-tut from the hawthorn, squirrel
scream in the beech. That marriage
did not last. He left. Now my path

breaks out of the woods, enters
a high meadow full of buttercups, and
I remember a hike in the Rockies years ago,

suddenly reaching such a meadow, gorged
with purple columbines but air too thin
even then. I slow in my hike now,

look ahead for the car beside the road. To marry again
is what I want in my life, I think,
no I'm quite certain.