belated words of love

I'm feeling marginally better, but there was something that I wanted to share.  The other day was Valentine's Day, of course, and last week it was also my third wedding anniversary. A friend wrote with good wishes, and asked if hubby and I are still madly in love.  Yes, I told her, although sometimes that meant passionately and sometimes it meant angrily!

Looking back (and I've had time for plenty of reflection the past week), I realize love is both everything I ever thought it would be, and nothing like what I expected.

How to put that into words?  I won't try.  Instead, I'll share my favorite love poem, by my late brother.  He was perpetually unlucky in love, yet knew exactly what it was all about...

                            Like the way bond white
                            embraces words on paper...
                            how silence covers the din
                            of a sleepless night...

                            Like the way two tangent zeroes
                            symbolize infinity...
                            how surface tension hugs
                            the dry edge of sanity...

                            Like meeting someone in a foreign country
                            who speaks your language...
                            how recovery welcomes your old self
                            with new and open arms...

                            Like the way a branch shoulders
                            a leaf between heaven and earth...
                            how sleeping skin yields
                            to familiar contact...

                            Like the way stars
                            reach across years...
                            how your father going blind
                            covets the light...

                            Like that...
                            hold me like that.

© P.A.C.

Comments

[Cindy]

so much truth in his words as love is so many things, many that to me are undescribable.. thanks for sharing his poem and a belated happy heart day.

[Rurality]

Nice. I especially like "how surface tension hugs the dry edge of sanity..." and of course the end.

Hope you're feeling better.

[Kris]

Ah, I remember that poem ... How I miss your brother, all these years later. How he could write.

[Trix]

This is really beautiful, even long after love-day...

[Clare]

Your brother was a talented poet. Perhaps Garrison Keillor would be interested in the poem. It certainly rivals many of the poems I read everyday at Writer's Almanac.