Summer
Perhaps the best and the worst part of loving Ivo was discovering that his talent in my field was greater than my own. I should have guessed it, given his propensity for the arts - after all, we first bonded over an opera with which he was not familiar, a fact that surprised us both.
I first suspected him of being hopelessly romantic when, in a maudlin moment, he commenced reciting poetry for me. Not merely poetry but arguably some of the finest ever written.
Was I expecting "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" Instead I got:
Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
and
As often-times the too resplendent sun
Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon
Back to her sombre cave, ere she hath won
A single ballad from the nightingale,
So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,
And all my sweetest singing out of tune.And as at dawn across the level mead
On wings impetuous some wind will come,
And with its too harsh kisses break the reed
Which was its only instrument of song,
So my too stormy passions work me wrong,
And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.
"When did you study poetry?" I demanded, now on wine and feeling the belligerence that always surfaced prior to our violent love making.
"I wanted to be an English major at Nottingham. My father was a geologist, though, so I followed him down that path. He would never have forgiven me if I hadn't. But I did take a few summer courses for fun."
How like Ivo to tackle something giving the rest of us fits "for fun". Only he could see the very demanding world of writing as relief.
"So why do you stick with something you hate?" All hostility was gone and I felt genuinely curious that he would work so hard in a profession he had not chosen for himself.
"Oh I quite love what I do," he said amiably, very much on wine as well by that time. "I can't imagine being anything other than a paleontologist."
"But surely dinosaurs don't interest you!" I exploded in protest. It seemed so contradictory to the poetic Ivo sitting across from me.
"The progression of life on earth interests me," he said, contemplating his empty glass. "Evolution, the creation and destruction of ecosystems, the emerging complexity, the birth of something new from the death of something else. Time is an endless work of art writing its history in the natural face of the earth."
"Ivo," I whispered, "That's the most beautiful thing you have ever said." I felt closer to him than ever before in that moment, wanted to be closer to him. I wanted him to make love to me, to join our restless spirits gently so that we might become one.
He looked confused. "More so than the poetry?"
And he reached for the bottle of wine.