If I Say Yes (Choral)

If I say yes,

it won’t be to some unknown future,

some fifty years, but a yes

to what we already have:

half a house and the two of us,

small sparrows in an unfamiliar nest.

If I say yes, it will be to words well-worn

and to ones we can barely speak aloud:

to house, or child, or forever.

If I say yes, know that I may be rusty

at choosing you over me, or me over anything.

I can hardly remember which finger takes a ring.

But I have studied us for years;

I have watched the way your neck greets your shoulders,

I have learned the laugh that means

you’ve forgotten yourself,

and I will choose that laughter every time.

And you will say yes to uncertainty

saved for meals much smaller than this one,

to the teakettle whistling for minutes,

to the fruit overripe and the tea over-steeped,

to endless and to endlessly-wanted touch.

And I will be sure that,

if I still don’t know the answer,

when we stand together overlooking

anything vast and borderless,

those moments are the happiest I’ve been

to hover over the railing of uncertainty

and reach out to you again

with an unsaid yes.

And if neither of us is certain,

if we live in a land without rain,

then there is a yes to something surer here

even than certainty,

to something surer still than water,

and we have known that, here,

as sure as it does rain twice a year.

And if we are asking each other

for time—

time our only matchmaker,

time the tea-kettle’s whistle,

time the fruit overripe

and time the tea over-steeped,

time our only choice, and time

always out of our hands—

then let’s learn to time our asking.

Let’s learn to ask only when the answer

could be yes—will be yes—

so there is some small chance of it staying yes

as long as we both shall live.

When I was small, unable to sleep,

and imagining, somewhere,

a love I hadn’t met, imagining that love

awake, imagining that love imagining me too,

I am certain that person was you.

I wish I knew another word for all of this—

I do. I do.

—Dale Trumbore