The Triangle of Love

 

We bitterly quarreled that evening like children.

I loitered and dawdled to your great disgust,

And the sunset turned purple before we left home:

With dogs on their leashes, at last we could walk;

You stomped past the houses, complaining in silence

While the sky blazed its final fuchsia hurrah

 

And there in the purplish blue field overhead

Were three strangely aligned bright heavenly lights

Arrayed in a cozy triangular way,

Afire in the sky like diamonds on velvet.

The fingernail moon and two planets combined

In a triangle just a hand’s breadth in size.

 

I oohed and I aahed while you stormed down the sidewalk

Not speaking to me, still angry I’d dawdled.

We formed our own angles, you and I and the dogs;

The dogs were the moon, and we were the planets.

I must have been Venus; you were probably Mars.

 

The news said the trinity blessed us that evening;

It would never appear in our lifetimes again.

The triangle of love, I called it in private.

Because it arose in the sky, I forgave you.

Because we are also a mere hand’s width apart.

 

In the triangle of love, romance hasn’t vanished:

It has only rushed skyward and sparkles above us;

We’ll once again find it if we lift our eyes upward.

You’re Mars, I am Venus; let forgiveness unite us

And the dogs keep us plodding the road of our marriage.