All About the Love

If I really think about it, I have been writing love poems for the last fifteen years, but they all belong to my son, who has been the brightest experience of my life. But for the last twelve years I have pretended I don’t write love poems. I don't read love poems— I shun them. Heartbreak, Hollywood, and being forced to endure hundreds of horrendous love poems could do that to a person, right?

But about six months ago, I broke my boycott and started writing a series of love poems. —See prior blog entry for a bit more info on that...

This poem is the first in that series and it's for Aiko Yamashiro, who is one of the best and most generous people I have ever known. Aiko has reminded me that letting people into your heart is as joyous as it is terrifying— that love is supposed to be difficult and beautiful and fierce— that love is an act of faith leaping into the unexplainable space between— that in this day of cynicism and sound bytes, love is an act of revolution. 

Love One

for Aiko

Seven years four months and fifteen days ago 

we read love as a hopeless practice.

We defined affection

as horizontal alignment when we slept 

and memories of good sex. 

In our arms we cradled fear 

as a twin to love

and confused them with towers.

Today love wrings us dry. We

blink too often, but finally sit, a table between us.

Between four hands rests courage 

on a platter, an offering we cannot pass off

as jackass punking or chalk down to artless youth. 

Five years ago

we called love stupid.

We thought scaling the ragged peaks of mountains

in a hail storm

the smarter choice

as if thinner air and falling skies might 

make our grief weightless, but without gravity

our hearts became spherical as satellites,

peripheral to our bodies.

Inside us we shrank our wishbones to nothing,

jumped on heady winds and forgot

about landing. 

Three years ago

love was still stupid

still commitments to badlands, 

foolish dives into mirages  

or battles against uninhabitable masses.

Two years ago love

was a rose by any other name

and red for the first time.

Yesterday

almost happened

between our four fists 

on a platter when we stretched our heart globes

to elliptical shadows

--risked holding hands

with the wounded

and called them namesakes. 

Yes, we are large enough

for this table sitting among white beards 

who confuse faith with invasion

and sanctuary with anxious greed.

Yesterday

we put naive on a table

on a platter

between hands

placed closer to hope

than to fear.

We promised to be naive

to be sweet 

so we might hope

we could be better

we could do better

than we have done.

Today love wrings us dry

after almost drowning. 

In a mouth of water we drink salt

and dare to imagine the brackish 

without suffocation and homelands

without fear.