Some thoughts on love

 Every now and then I wonder why I wrote more poetry (and whiny songs, you should hear them sometime!) about Daniel before we started dating/got married. I'm pretty sure it's because I was terrified of writing sappy loveydovey stuff...although I don't consider myself to be that kind of person. So maybe I was afraid I'd try to write that kind o' stuff and then make myself gag because it'd be so awful? Anyhow, somewhere from that came this, which doesn't end up being about writing romantic poetry after all--at least not much:

The love compelling poetry

Is love the mystery.

Not love-in-bliss or love sublime,

But love in verity.

In other words, accompanied

By love’s fair share of tears,

An ocean’s worth of ups and downs,

Hope breaking, hard, on fear.

What man could write of paradise

Without a sense of earth

Or shadow-strung mortality,

The gifting of his birth?

Young love is half-tormented,

Beauty threatens to deceive—

And what a wealth of verse these doubts

Have caused young minds to weave!

Old love sits by the fireside

In health and sickness both,

Content, at ease, but even so,

Old lovers cannot boast

Of one eternal glory day,

The end of troubled times—

They’re just as wed to earthly ills

As lovers in their prime.

What causes love to come and go

Or finally remain—

But never without sacrifice,

And never free from pain?

The poets may think love a god—

Capricious, cruel, blind.

And so love is a God, but not

Of that distressing kind.

True Love—beyond the world’s bounds

Is constant, holy,wise,

Stares straight into our faithless hearts,

With bright, unblinking eyes.

We bring to that most perfect Love

The only love we can—

A love of pain as well as joy,

The selfish love of man.

And yet, we’re never turned away,

Poor fools, nor condemned,

However late we come to love,

However far we’ve been.

Returning now, from heaven’s court

To our small earthly home,

I’ve vowed to love my husband’s self

As dearly as my own.

And this my heart could never do

If not for True Love’s grace,

Who takes my failure, makes it his,

And never hides his face.