The Morning after the Wedding…

“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.”

  ~William Shakespeare

From “Ode to Common Things” by Pablo Neruda

“I love
all things,
not because they are passionate or sweet-smelling
but because,
I don’t know,
because
this ocean is yours,
and mine:
these buttons
and wheels
and little
forgotten
treasures,
fans upon
whose feathers
love has scattered
its blossoms,
glasses, knives and
scissors —
all bear
the trace
of someone’s fingers
on their handle or surface,
the trace of a distant hand
lost
in the depths of forgetfulness.”

 

from “Ode to Common Things” by Pablo Neruda

A Valentine

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Ebb  by Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

I know what my heart is like

Since your love died:

It is like a hollow ledge

Holding a little pool

Left there by the tide,

A little tepid pool,

Drying inward from the edge.

“Love Poem”

Love Poem by Kathleen Raine (1908 – 2003)

Yours is the face that the earth turns to me, Continuous beyond its human features lie The mountain forms that rest against the sky. With your eyes, the reflecting rainbow, the sun’s light Sees me; forest and flower, bird and beast Know and hold me forever in the world’s thought, Creation’s deep untroubled retrospect. When your hand touches mine it is the earth That takes me–the green grass, And rocks and rivers; the green graves, And children still unborn, and ancestors, In love passed down from hand to hand from God. Your love comes from the creation of the world, From those paternal fingers, streaming through the clouds That break with light the surface of the sea. Here, where I trace your body with my hand, Love’s presence has no end; For these, your arms that hold me, are the world’s. In us, the continents, clouds and oceans meet Our arbitrary selves, extensive with the night, Lost, in the heart’s worship, and the body’s sleep.

Pablo Neruda, One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

Love Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda (translated by Mark Eisner)

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

 

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

 

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

From The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, 2004

“My love, she’s like some raven at my window…”

From the master poet:

“At the touch of love….”

Plato said, “At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.”

“Prayers” (first published in Sacred Journey, 2006)

Some people pray with their hands clasped

tightly together, as if the pressure

of squeezing their fingers together

would somehow mold their hopes into shape.

Some people pray with their palms pressed

together, fingers pointing upward

as if an invisible compass

would somehow quide them in the right direction.

Some people pray with their arms wrapped

around their bodies, clutching their humanity,

praying not out of humility

but out of fear. 

Some people pray with their hands stretched

outward, away from their true nature

as if the world owed them something.

And then,

there are those people whose hands

are works of prayer:

hands that open doors for the elderly;

hands that comfort the sick and lonely;

hands that pour love into food they prepare.

Hands that play, Patty cake, patty cake,

baker’s man.  Hands

that give birth to beauty:

in paintings, in sculptures, by writing,

by signing for the deaf.

Prayers aren’t always words –

they are works of love

best given away to others.