Silly Little Love Poems, Loosed at Last

Memoir of a Marriage in Poetry, Part I - Innocent Love

In celebration of April as National Poetry Month, I will be releasing over the next week or so some love poetry I wrote that has lain too long in my drawer.

The first few, shown below, are short and simple, written as a young bride.

In time they grow longer, darker, deeper, exploring the many faces and shapes that love takes as it grows and strengthens, wanes and darkens, matures and steadies.

All together, they comprise a memoir of a marriage, captured in poetry, exploring love in all of its manifestations.

Part I, Innocent Love

We were the opposites that attract. He was a young marine, fresh from the war-torn jungles of Vietnam. I was a flower-child who wrote poetry and read Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet. I dropped out of school during my senior year to marry him because he had to move away for work and I couldn’t live without him.

We ran off to Las Vegas to get married, he and I in his Porche, his parents in their Mustang, racing across the dessert. We were all pulled over for speeding but since his parents were leading the way and we were off to get married, the officer let us go with a warning. But unknown to us it was Race Week in Vegas and all the motels and hotels were full, so we headed off to LA and his parents headed home.

It was late April and there were only six weeks left in the school year, so I enrolled myself in Van Nuys High so I could get my diploma. But it felt weird entering classrooms where I didn’t know a soul so I quit after two weeks. That summer I enrolled in a community college.

We were still wildly in love, but as an Ironworker building bridges and topping off sky-scrapers, his work kept taking him away from me, sometimes for weeks at a time, so we were constantly being parted.

I wrote the following poems to mourn his absence and celebrate love’s sweetness. The last one shows too the fear I felt of losing him forever, for his work on the high iron was so dangerous.

Now, While

Now
While the love-light of your eyes
Shines upon my face,
And your bare-bodied shadow
Presses close to mine,

Now
With the moonlight and trees
Spreading patterns across our bed,
And the corners of the room
lie dark and drowsy,

Now
Let us kiss and love.

Then
While our bodies still hungrily cling
Let us sleep,

Closely breathing,
Closely dreaming,
Close in love.

Gone

You’re gone!
And though I know
You’ll be back Monday
The word gets caught between
The empty of my arms

Just Asking

We loved
We came to be like
Mirrors, reflecting like

I saw myself
An image in your eye.

When you’re gone
I find myself
An empty likeness

And I question, are you gone
Or am I?

Would That Love

Would that love move me once
That it move me far enough
Would that love move me now
In all I do.

For the way is far too strong
That would push against the throng,
Cut me loose to lose myself
In loving you.

Since the day will surely show
When I’ll have to let you go
What a waste to love you then
With clutching arms.

So let me meet your every wish
Make myself a selfless gift
That I fill to overflowing
Loving you.

And when we part, if part we must,
I’ll unclasp in loving trust,
For Love spent us to the full
In every way.

Stay tuned for Part II, Erotic Love: The Geometry and Geography of Love.