Provence, 1998

We sat
on sun-warmed stone, a bench outside
the little house,
and looked out at the lavender fields.

She closed her eyes and inhaled,
the sleepy sweet smells of dusk in Provence,
of July and dinner and daughter
and over it all, the blanketing scent
of the waving purple hills below us,
layered silence-

Forehead on her cool shoulder,
I absorbed it all,
kept it like dried flowers for winter.