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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Look: A Poem About Missing And Finding Love




Look.
Look around you
at the people, so driven,
by a force
relentless as gravity
inescapable as day and night, life and death.
The power that winds us and grinds us,
makes us crazy is the hunger for love,
the search for love,  the absence of love,
the loss of love.
Its effects are everywhere,
visible, invisible,
pervasive;
in this landscape of loss
and loneliness
the search grips everyone
obsessive as a drug hunger
so intrusive and demanding
that we are not even aware
as it seeps into the air we breathe,
the molecules of our daily existence
have sponged it up
so that it becomes like the music
from the next apartment
or from a passing car,
a beat felt,
vibrating up through the floor, humming
in the walls, everywhere.
I will wear clothes that get me love…
I will scent myself
to find love…
I will paint my face
to attract love…
I will sculpt my body
to perfect love….
I will groom my hair
to waft love…
I will signal my hunger
without knowing my desperation…
I will scream my loneliness
in silent longing glances
across parties,
in stores,
twist my neck,
twist my soul
for its wanting……
want my soul
without knowing
that it is love
without a search
without a need
without a struggle.
It took me but half a life
to meet the person
in whom love made a home for me.
I twisted and howled so loud
I did not see her when she first knocked at my door.
Her face was not familiar
her smell was strange
her voice was odd
I kept looking
like so many fools before me
love did not make the noise
of the neighbor’s apartment
the thump of the passing car
love was unexpected
because I was drawing children’s pictures
in a book with a silly title:
True Love For Soul Mates in Eternity.
That was the wrong book.
My love gently took the book from my hand;
here, she whispered, look around you
this is what love really is:
only when you’ve exhausted your immaturity
are you ready
to care for someone
as deeply as I now care
for you.
Look around you
at the heartsick lonely ones
who sniff greedily but disdainfully
for a few moments
at the possibility of love
and then move on,
hoping somehow love will find them
when they have missed its delicate sign
a thousand times, so busy with the pursuit
that they have failed the simple lessons
of caring.
Now I have, at last, exhausted my immaturity:
now your voice is familiar,
your face is beautiful
your music is here,
in the room with me,
not some distant fateful sound,
here, with me,
I hear you, I see you,
I smell you,
I love you more
all the time.

3 comments:

  1. I love your poem! So beautiful and truly a gift for me today! Thank you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for your comment. It is now Jan 1, 2013 and I am only now being notified via Gmail that there is a comment about my poem. Again, thanks.

    ReplyDelete

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