For the sake of love

I'm celebrating Valentine's Day as concept--a day to appreciate love. I don't have a valentine at this time in my life, but I know too well the spark, slow burn and glow. I'm forever grateful to have lived and loved.

I took this photo a few years ago of friends of mine. I'm not sure I've even shown it to them. I saw them wander off from a huge family/best friends sort of party for a quiet moment together, and I loved the love I saw.

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Last night, I re-watched The Last of the Mohicans. You know the one, where Daniel Day Lewis runs magnificently through forests and up mountains to save his love. There's the heart-stopping scene where he must leave her to be captured so that he can live to save her. His final words, "I will find you. I will find you," before he jumps into a waterfall and is carried away. Le sigh.

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I'm going to post poetry snippets from some great writers (please search them out for the entire poems and where to purchase their collections) and a couple of badges I received from Rebecca/WordsCrafter. If any of my readers (whom I love) wish to pass along the badges, please bag 'em and share 'em. It's all about the love today. Bloggers=Love was made by Jules at Trying to Get Over the Rainbow for everyone.

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she

stolen from my bone

is it any wonder

i hunger to tunnel back

inside desperate

to reconnect the rib and clay

and to be whole again--(a portion of adam thinking, which appeared in the collection, quilting, by Lucille Clifton. Ms. Clifton died last year. Her voice will be missed but can be savored again through her books.)
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I want you to know

one thing.

You know how this is:

if I look

at the crystal moon, at the red branch

of the slow autumn at my window,

if I touch

near the fire

the impalpable ash

or the wrinkled body of the log,

everything carries me to you,

as if everything that exists,

aromas, light, metals,

were little boats that sail

toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

--(a portion of If You Forget Me by the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda)

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This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,

I fell in love with a wren

and later in the day with a mouse

the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,

I fell for a seamstress

still at her machine in the tailor's window,

and later for a bowl of broth,

steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,

without recompense, without gifts,

or unkind words, without suspicion,

or silence on the telephone.

--(a portion of Aimless Love by Billy Collins or his site. This poem is so incredible. Read it all in his Nine Horses collection.)

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This post is not complete without haiku from a couple of the old masters.

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By flowering pear

and by the lamp of the moon

she reads her letter

--Buson (1715-1783)

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Slung over a screen,

a dress of silk and gauze.

The autumn wind.
--Buson

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I wish she were here

to listen to my bitching

and enjoy this moon.

--Issa (1762-1826)

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Love to all the storytellers in whatever form they write!