Love (2)

I wrote the following poem when a friend of mine was struggling with feelings that were at the time utterly unwelcome; I think we’ve probably all been there….

 

Love (2)

 

Falling in love is much like falling sick:

It wasn’t part of the original plan.

There’s never a right time for it,

But when it happens, there comes

A terrible sense of inevitability,

A point when you can’t put it off

For a single second longer

And you succumb wholeheartedly.

It sometimes sneaks up uninvited

Like a stealthy summer cold.

You kid yourself it’s just pollen

That makes eyes and nose run:

The ache you feel is just overwork,

The heat in your veins merely

A reflection of the searing sun

And the shivers that shake you

Are geese parading over your grave.

But as the symptoms grow

So too does the unwelcome news

That there is nothing you can do

And it must run its true course.

Sometimes you recover, wake

To find the signs have vanished

Much like the glistening morning dew

As the sun warms the new day.

A faint uneasy memory remains

And you bless your luck at escaping,

Getting off so lightly this time.

Other times you toss and turn,

Boil and burn for years on end,

Find no relief, no end, no cure.

You get used to it finally,

Grow to enjoy the constant fever.

You won’t die of this disease,

But at times you might wish to.

Falling in love is much like falling ill,

But it is part of someone’s plan.

It’s timing is never our own,

And what we learn from it

Is both its gift and its curse.

 

by Viv

Love (1)

  I wrote the following poem some years ago and posted it anonymously on a friend’s blog. He still doesn’t know it was me, but he hoiked it out of the comments box and gave it a post of its own. What alarmed me at the time was the fact that he added a very graphic picture of a young woman who had self harmed by slashing at her arms; the poem was not meant to be about this issue at all but at a subconscious level my friend had picked up certain of my history that meant this was one of the ways he interpretted the poem. I was both impressed and horrified and I never owned up to him! 

In some ways it was intended to be more like John Donne or one of the other metaphysical poets who wrote about the way divine love shaped us, but it came out quite differently.

I feel rather naked about sharing the background to the poem; it somehow makes the whole thing rather more personal….

Love (1)

 

Love wounds us.

Like tribal scars,

Love marks us,

Shows us as new

Initiated beings.

Parallel slashes

Of raised scar tissue

Label us as different.

Love hurts us:

The brief bold cut

Dripping hot blood

Shows us changed,

Reinvented daily.

Only those who share

Our pattern of scarring

Can see and know

The person we have become,

Or see the beauty and power

Of those indelible wounds,

Invisible to those untouched

By Love’s kind blade.

by Viv