When I saw this month's subject, "Love is...," I thought of two poems, and I'll share them below. Both are poems I've shared before on this blog. Be sure to visit our host to see what everyone else shared today.
Love's as Warm as Tears
by C. S. Lewis
Love's as warm as tears,
Love is tears:
Pressure within the brain,
Tension at the throat,
Deluge, weeks of rain,
Haystacks afloat,
Featureless seas between
Hedges, where once was green.
Love's as fierce as fire,
Love is fire:
All sorts - infernal heat
Clinkered with greed and pride,
Lyric desire, sharp-sweet,
Laughing, even when denied,
And that empyreal flame
Whence all loves came.
Love's as fresh as spring,
Love is spring:
Bird-song hung in the air,
Cool smells in a wood,
Whispering, "Dare! Dare!"
To sap, to blood,
Telling "Ease, safety, rest,
Are good; not best."
Love's as hard as nails,
Love is nails:
Blunt, thick, hammered through
The medial nerves of One
Who, having made us, knew
The thing He had done,
Seeing (with all that is)
Our cross, and His.
You can see the second poem here and also read more by this poet, Kimberly Johnson.
Foley Catheter
by Kimberly Johnson
I clean its latex length three times a day
With kindliest touch,
Swipe an alcohol swatch
From the tender skin at the tip of him
Down the lumen
To the drainage bag I change
Each day and flush with vinegar.
When I vowed for worse
Unwitting did I wed this
Something-other-than-a-husband, jumble
Of exposed plumbing
And euphemism. Fumble
I through my nurse’s functions, upended
From the spare bed
By his every midnight sound.
Unsought inside our grand romantic
Intimacy
Another intimacy
Opens—ruthless and indecent, consuming
All our hiddenmosts.
In a body, immodest
Such hunger we sometimes call tumor;
In a marriage
It’s cherish. From the Latin for cost.
4 comments:
"Foley Catheter" is a gut-punch, Ruth - a good one. I lived that life, my brother-in-law's last 8 days of life. I wasn't even his wife, yet the intimacy and LOVE in both giving and receiving at such a base human level remains a lasting, bittersweet gift. Love is hard. Thank you for sharing this.
Thank you for both of these poems that speaks to love in different ways. Love is vulnerable and not easy and it's the small thing we witness in times of watching loved you struggle as in the second poem.
Ruth, no one ever said that love is easy. Your poems show the complexities of love, the good and the bad, the easy and the hard.
Both poems are new to me and speak of love's cost. Never easy, but always cherished by both the giver and the receiver. Thanks for sharing these words with us.
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