Tag Archives: Love poem

If I Were Water and You Were Air for dVerse Poets

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If I Were Water & You Were Air

I used to be restless water―
only the froth and currents
of a moving life.

Now I am still water,
sinking down to where
I can be found
by anyone willing to stand quietly
and look.

Is it true that moving water never freezes?
Is it true that still waters run deep?
Is it true that we are wed in steam?

“What if, caught by air,
it never lets me go?” I ask.
“But even water
turned to air
must fall at last,” you say.

“And what if I fall farther from you?” I say.
“Or what if I never again find banks
that open to contain me?”

I used to be swift flowing water.
Now I am a pool that sinks me deeper every year.
So deep, so deep I sink
that on its way to find me,
even air may lose its way.

Our dVerse Poets prompt today is to consider the opening line from a poem from one of my favorite poets, Edna St Vincent Millay. The Poem is “Love Is Not All,” and the line is:
“Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink nor slumber nor a roof against the rain.” As a response, I’m sharing the title poem from my newly published book of poems.

 

The Blade of Grief for dVerse Poets Chaucerian Roundel

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 The Blade of Grief

The loss of one with whom our life was built
will come to be the loss of our life, too,
We view the rest of life without a clue.

The blade of grief thus buried to its hilt,
we hope that it will do what such blades do,
The loss of one with whom our life was built,
will come to be the loss of our life, too.

We view our hopes for death with little guilt,
for death is that new love we hope to woo.
We seek no other lover that is new.
The loss of one with whom our life was built
will come to be the loss of our life, too.
We view the rest of life without a clue.

For dVerse Poets Chaucerian Roundel

To read other roundels created for this prompt, go HERE.

Hidden Treasure for dVerse Poets

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Hidden Treasure

We are the ones that dwell within,
and what we keep hidden from each other
forms the mystery that keeps us coming back for more.
Like the relish that enhances the main course.
Like the dessert at the end of the meal,
not the real nourishment, but rather
a reward for putting up with the day-to-day
ragtag repetitions, irritations, boredoms
of knowing each other so well.
The loyalties, down to the heart honesties,
those passions held in common, those trials shared
are the meals we feed each other day-by-day.
But what person does not need, as well,
the thrill of the unopened package,
the darkness hidden under the stairs?

“Where we’re going, we don’t need eyes to see” – Sam Neill, Event Horizon (1997)
“We are the ones that dwell within” – The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
“Thrill me” – Night of the Creeps (1986) These are the three lines I chose for dVerse Poets

  Above are the three sentences I chose for the dVerse Poets promt. Let’ see which won out.

Open Hand for SOCS, Sept 12, 2025

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Open Hand

Wings held lightly without crushing
survive to join the world’s wild rushing,
while love held by a tight-clenched fist
quells half our reason to exist.

Some laud passions most rapacious—
grasping, volatile, tenacious;
but this is not the love I feel.
I do not seek to swoon or reel.

The tenacity of a skin tight glove
might stay my soaring to heights above.
I need your love like an open hand.
Not for me the wedding band.

The bond I seek from you, my dear,
is not the gauntlet that I fear
but rather, fingers whose sensations
are left free to life’s elations.

Butterflies kept in a jar
lose that beauty seen from afar.
That grace of movement caught on air
is what makes their beauty rare.

I love it when your arms enfold,
but if you love me, loose your hold.
The measure of my tenacity
is that I’ll come back to thee.

jdbphoto

The SOCS prompt is “Hand.”

The SOCS prompt is “Hand.”

Forest Shadows, for dVerse Poets, Aug 5, 2025

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Forest Shadows

A man is bending his wife—
melding their shadows with the green forest.
They do not listen
to the nearby cannon’s roar––
will not imagine
that their life together,
so new,
might
not
stretch
into
the
future.

When he looks at his pocket watch,
someday children
ringing a well-stocked table
vanish in
her imagination.

He lifts his musket to his shoulder,
trying to believe
in a future
and in it,
this memory:
two shadows
joined as one,
invisible against
the forest wall.

For dVerse Poets, the prompt is “Forest”. If you’d like to participate, go HERE.

Still the Universe for dVerse Poets Ekphrastic Prompt, June 19, 2025

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Still The Universe

Bleach all the colors from the flowers. Cancel out the sun.
Stay the music. Still the dance. Tell laughter it is done.
She will not walk this way again so all must cease to walk.
Her conversation’s over. The whole world must not talk.
Earth upon its axis should stop its ceaseless motion.
The cook must quiet his cooking pots, the chemist trash his potion.
The universe must cease to be now that my true love’s dead,
and I’ll lay myself beside her on our wedding bed.

 

For dVerse Poets

To see poems, go to link above. To see the prompt, go HERE.  image from Pixabay.com

I Took a Picture of Your Name for dVerse Poets, Feb 14, 2025

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I Took A Picture Of Your Name.

After so many years, seeing it again on the screen,
I took a picture of your name.
Not written by your hand,
it had a strangeness––
featureless, revealing nothing.
It had no voice,
no breath.

Out there sharing itself with the world,
it has formed a wall around
that intimacy it birthed when you took my hand in yours,
using your name to pull me closer,
powerless against its strength on your tongue.

Everyone wanted to share a part of what made you you,
but I only wanted to be with you, back when,
scrawled in your careless hand,
you were written on my soul.

Wanting to be perfect for you,
remembering that tattoo you traced across my back.
Your name and mine.
“Always,” you wrote.

For the dVerse Poet’s Pub, Feb 14, 2025

To see other poems written to this prompt, go HERE.

Rich Harvest, for dVerse Poets, Oct 2, 2024

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Rich Harvest

The night that we brought in the wheat,
our weeks of labor now complete,
we raised our voices, beat our feet,
and in that stifling prairie heat,
weary and arm-sore, yet replete
with satisfaction for jobs well-done
earned in the dust and chaff and sun,
we ceased our labors and had some fun.

Hank gave the prim schoolteacher a treat
by lifting her from her safe seat
to move her to the fiddler’s beat.
Soon, her hairpins met defeat,
her wild hair anything but neat,
and Hank was heard to woo the miss
and then to plant a tender kiss.
She remembers all of this

now that their family’s complete
with Rita, Sarah, and little Pete.
Now every harvest, when you greet
each townsperson you chance to meet,
chances are they will repeat
how Hank brought in the wheat that year
and afterwards, conquered his fear
and dared to call the school marm, “dear.”

The dVerse Poets prompts today are harvest and haunting–to use one or both as our theme in a poem. It is a bit early in the month for “haunting,” so I’m sticking to the harvest theme. To read other poems written to these themes go HERE.

Double Reversal, For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 665

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Double Reversal

The silhouettes of leafless branches of the jacaranda tree
sketched by the sun upon the surface of the wall
recall the windswept tangle of your hair.

Call back the edges of memories long buried in a deep back room.
Stolen kisses made illicit by your ex’s change of mind.
Senseless posturings and  unsuccessful reversals.

Finally coming back to what we were before.
You were the prize hard fought for,
and I, the inevitable ending.

 

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 665, the prompt words are:  tangle surface call back deep room kisses edge sense sketches silhouette windswept

Painted Poetry

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An ekphrastic poem is one that describes a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. For this exhibition, however, an artist was given a poem and asked to create a painting that reflected the themes of the poem. (To my knowledge, there is no term for this reversal of the ekphrastic process.) My poem about forbidden love is given below and above is the painting it inspired. Painting by Leonardo de Dios Jerónimoque, poem by me.

The show was the  ExpoColoquio Internacional PreTextos del Solsticio held in Tabasco, Mexico, on June 20. I was honored to be a part of it. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend, but a friend took the photo of the painting that was based on my poem.  Below is its Spanish translation.