No Sissy Cupids in South Dakota

If Cupid roamed the prairie, he’d have feedsack wings, tiny feet wrapped in plastic tarp, a bow made of plum sapling, and cornstalk arrows dipped in creeping charlie.

My meditation on love started this morning when I walked outside with the dogs. The peacrew was milling around the back porch, picking at green grass unveiled by recent warm days that melted most of the snow. Early morning light washed the farmyard in pink and orange. Out in the pasture, the skeleton of the homestead house leaned like an old farmwife after a hard winter. The hayloft windows blinked in the sun—eyes in a barn-red face crowned with a swirling halo of pigeons.

This Maxfield Parrish landscape was about to bring me to my knees when I heard, in the linden tree, a warbly song. There he was: the first spring robin. An answer came from the shelterbelt, and he started dancing between the linden and a Black Hills spruce. Here, he sang, let’s build a nest here. With Valentine’s Day and our 20th wedding anniversary around the corner, the timing was uncann[er]y!

So here’s a prairie love poem for Ray, for spring thaws of all kinds, for Valentine’s Day, for anniversaries, for single friends watching the horizon, and for my absolute certainty that even if we feel alone, we are surrounded by love, right now.

PLAIN SONG

Shake off the glitter, don’t
be dazzled by cupidy arrows.
Love is not in the heart.
It’s in the slow, steady hands
that put things right after a
thunderstorm, in the strong
back that hoes an asparagus bed,
in the legs that stoop for dogplay
or bend to sweep up pieces
of a broken coffee cup.
It’s in stomach muscles twisted
into braids on days when you
can’t find your way, in the patient
calling, calling, calling to you
until you can breathe again.
It’s in the watching, waiting,
the unshakeable faith
that you’ll come back.