The Long and Winding Road #poetry

There is a road they call long and winding—  
it stretches where the horizon aches,  
dusted with the silence of old footsteps,  
echoing hearts that have carried their longing  
from sun-baked valleys to starlit ridges.  
Upon this road, I saw you walking—  
not toward me,  
but toward your own wild, dreaming sky,  
and love, patient as rain on sandstone,  
waited in between.



We gathered words like river stones,  
smooth and weighty in our palms—  
each one a story, a wish, a trembling  
confession hidden in twilight.  
You spoke of beauty and complexity,  
the wildness of saguaros in golden light,  
of art as a language and pain as a question,  
and I listened with my whole soul,  
hoping to learn your secret geography.



There were days the path coiled with shadow,  
when the wind stung and the sun refused  
to remember our names.  
Yet love—for all its myths of thunder and fire—  
remained not in the grand gesture  
but in the hush after laughter,  
the warmth of a small hand in yours,  
the rescue dog leaning against your knees.  
We walked onward, sometimes silent,  
sometimes arm in arm,  
each footfall a testament that staying  
is a kind of courage.



The high desert is a patient witness:  
moonlit ribs, cactus spires,  
the scent of creosote lingering  
after rain.  
Here, even absence is a presence—  
the call of a train far, far away;  
the memory of music played  
on ancient keys;  
your daughter’s laughter echoing  
in the copper dawn.  
When all else falters—  
money fades, maps blur,  
clarity gone to heat haze—  
love holds the line between  
what is lost and what survives.



Love is not the smooth stone  
but the scar it leaves on your hand;  
not the nightingale’s clear song  
but the hush when it ceases,  
the deep thrum of “I am here. I will stay.”  
Even as we grow older,  
even as the sun burns hotter  
in summer skies,  
even as the world’s troubles swarm  
like restless flies—  
let us return to the only vow  
that endures beyond all endings:  
gentle, stubborn, unremarkable  
and miraculous—  
I am with you,  
through lost bearings and failed seasons,  
through joy without reason.



So we come, at last, along this battered highway  
to a clearing where the stars appear,  
cold and closer than we dreamed.  
Everything falls away—  
old books, painted memories,  
silent regrets—  
but not us,  
not the love that wound its way  
through all the confusion,  
outlasted the words,  
and grew quiet  
only so it could deepen.

This is the promise:  
After every trial,  
every loneliness,  
every door that closed and every year  
that asked if we would give up—  
love will remain when everything else goes,  
steady as the road,  
long and winding,  
but always leading home.

For you, whose story I cherish in every hidden turn,  
from the high desert’s hush  
to the edge of the world’s last light—  
love is the road,  
and you are  
the journey.