Loving
By John Herlihy

To love only one person simply isn’t enough,
The beloved adored, the rest treated rough.
I love wild flowers, dawn mist, honeyed coffee,
Birdsong, twilight, and sticky English toffee.
What about rain and its torrential downpours,
Or the sighting of an eagle as my heart soars.
Forget not the moody moon or blink of a star,
Loving brings things near that often seem far.
Night vision plays light against night’s darkness;
Nature’s bounty can be cruel in all its starkness.
Nature’s beauty and its truth can never tell a lie;
Loving has its own reality heard even in a sigh.

I will always love you until I arrive at death’s door;
But loving you isn’t enough to preserve in my store.
I will love most tenderly the sun, moon, and the stars;
I will preserve nature’s precious beauty in glass jars.
Bell towers and sacred groves, I will love them all;
Their beloved sanctity will hold my heart in thrall.
The mountains, rivers, torrential rain, they all know;
Divine mystery captured in the fragile flakes of snow.
Even the chill winter cold instills whiteness into breath;
While all of nature speaks the hushed words of death.
The act of loving washes away a multitude of sin,
Filling us with heavenly light to the heart’s brim.