Monday Moment: That unnoticed, that necessary

When two lovers first meet, the goal is to get noticed, to be interesting. A plunging neckline. A funny joke. The best date ever. The most thoughtful greeting card.

Spending a week with my husband on a beach, nearly one year after we said our vows, I realized why I so quickly fell in love with the poem, "Variations on the word sleep," by Margaret Atwood:

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center. I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
and that necessary.

When two people actually inhabit love, the noticeable stuff is largely novelty. You're so necessary to one another that even the most private of all actions (sleep) is eased by your presence. Yet, you're also the unnoticed sweep of a hand at the small of a back. You're the in-out drum of breath beside the other person, sitting in silence, noticing only the crash of waves on sand. 

Ah, yes, this is home.