❝
Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.
❞

❝
Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind.
❞

❝
Something that is loved is never lost.
❞

Love

One&Only You are the only one for me

The Love of Paris and Helen By Jacques-Louis David (1788)

No one No one else compares to you

Ovid was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the three canonical poets of Latin literature.

Love can kill

Love can save

& now, some poetry

The following five poems were all penned by Toni Morrison. In my humble opinion, amongst other things, they talk of love (“Once more you know / You will never die again”), sexual awakening (“fruit that had lost its green” / “Red cherries become jam”), identity and place (“the fish mistake my hair for home”).

“Eve Remembering”

❝
1
I tore from a limb fruit that had lost its green.
My hands were warmed by the heat of an apple
Fire red and humming.
I bit sweet power to the core.
How can I say what it was like?
The taste! The taste undid my eyes
And led me far from the gardens planted for a child
To wildernesses deeper than any master’s call.
2
Now these cool hands guide what they once caressed;
Lips forget what they have kissed.
My eyes now pool their light
Better the summit to see.
3
I would do it all over again:
Be the harbor and set the sail,
Loose the breeze and harness the gale,
Cherish the harvest of what I have been.
Better the summit to scale.
Better the summit to be.
❞

“The Perfect Ease of Grain”

❝
The perfect ease of grain
Time enough to spill
The flavor of a woman carried through the rain.
–
Honey-talk tongues
Down home dreams
A rushed by shapely prayer.
Evening lips part to hush
Questions raised at dawn.
–
The melon yields another slice.
Fingers understand.
Ecstasy becomes us all.
Red cherries become jam.
–
Deep juvenile sleep
A whistle trace
White shorelines in green air.
Welcome doors held open
When goodbye is “So long.”
–
The perfect poise of grain
Time enough to spill
The flavor of a woman remembered on a train.
❞

“Someone Leans Near”

❝
Someone leans near
And sees the salt your eyes have shed.
–
You wait, longing to hear
Words of reason, love or play
To lash or lull you toward the hollow day.
–
Silence kneads your fear
Of crumbled star-ash sifting down
Clouding the rooms here, here.
–
You shore up your heart to run. To stay.
But no sign or design marks the narrow way.
–
Then on your skin a breath caresses
The salt your eyes have shed.
–
And you remember a call clear, so clear
“You will never die again.”
–
Once more you know
You will never die again.
❞

“It Comes Unadorned”

❝
It comes
Unadorned
Like a phrase
Strong enough to cast a spell;
It comes
Unbidden,
Like the turn of sun through hills
Or stars in wheels of song.
The jeweled feet of women dance the earth.
Arousing it to spring.
Shoulders broad as a road bend to share the weight of years.
Profiles breach the distance and lean
Toward an ordinary kiss.
Bliss.
It comes naked into the world like a charm.
❞

I Am Not Seaworthy”

❝
I am not seaworthy.
Look how the fish mistake my hair for home.
I had a life, like you. I shouldn’t be riding the sea.
I am not seaworthy.
Let me be earth bound; star fixed
Mixed with sun and smacking air.
Give me the smile, the magic kiss
To trick little boy death of my hand.
I am not seaworthy. Look how the fish mistake my hair for home.
❞

Author: Anna Bidoonism

Poems, prose & literary analysis—this is who I am. View all posts by Anna Bidoonism