Playful Companionship

Not all love burns with white-hot passion. In fact, if love is ONLY white-hot passion it's likely consume itself, then fall to ashes like burning paper. Of course there's a love that smoulders, occasionally bursting into flame. But love for the long-haul is often that companionly love that rests easily and confidently... and sometimes manifests itself playfully.

Such is the love in "Year Day" by Jane Kenyon. Before her death, Jane and her husband, poet Donald Hall, lived on his family farm in New Hampshire where they loved, laughed, cried, played and wrote.

Intimacy in Jane Kenyon's world often mingled loving with playfulness as in the following poem.

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Year Day


We are living together on the earth.
The clock's heart
beats in it's wooden chest.
The cats follow the sun through the house.
We lie down together at night.

Today, you work in your office,
and I in my study. Sometimes
we are busy and casual.
Sitting here, I can see
the path we have made on the rug.

The hermit gives up
after thirty years of hiding in the jungle.
The last door to the last room
comes unlatched. Here are the gestures
of my hands. Wear them in your hair.


Jane Kenyon