Love’s Permanence
We love to alternate
Between being ourselves
And thinking of being someone else
So restless our souls
I
For one
Years past
Found my reflection
The hall mirror
The bathroom mirror
The window on a dark night
With candle burning behind.
I stared
Aired my grief
Till it exhausted itself
Then onto the fishbowl
Vibrated the waters with my angst
Scared Goldy out of her submerged wonderland
Purged some additional inner fire
At memory’s snapshots of humanoids
Who had chosen to dismiss who I was
Remained stacked like losing cards
Yeah…
It all came down the conundrum
To love
Or not to love
To contemplate it better to have loved and lost
Than to have never loved at all?
I paced back and forth
Fist-clenched
Grinding teeth
Longing to be accepted
Was my nightly echo
Then…
As I found myself frozen still
As if the revelation
The idea so kindly
So…
So right.
I was speechless
Embracing the thought was enough
Outside
Daybreak
Snowfall
I pressed my face against the icy window
No reflection
While the me
The who I was
Have always been
Watched early spring snowflakes
Languidly make their way
To the frozen birdbath below patiently waiting for the real spring
As it inhaled the dawning sun
And continued its daily shadowing
The grave of my affection
The giving that gave back
The ever-faithful reciprocating love
So obvious was the lesson
So simple was love’s need
Such an epiphany still teaching me
As this day
Is but a dawning of yesteryears teachings
Tomorrows warmth
Where sun will spring
The blooming of new petals
In waiting
Ron
And that is just the big picture response to this writing. The details go all over the place, from title to ‘altering being ourselves and ‘someone else.’ “…stacked like losing cards” — loved that. “It all came down the conundrum” I find curiously better than if it had been written “It all came down to the conundrum,” because without the word ‘to,’ it is as though the concept is coming down the ‘pike,’ like a slip of paper in a pneumatic tube ‘to love or not to love, risk and grow or don’t risk and stay frozen…you choose.’ Even the birdbath continuing its daily shadowing, like a sundial. This poem is a marvel. My favorite two lines are:
“The grave of my affection
The giving that gave back”