Tag Archives: Love poem

“Desert” for Blast from the Blog

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Desert

Year by year, my heart grows sparser––
a lone cactus lifting arms heavenward in supplication.

My heart grows succulent,
hoarding moisture
to grow sparse blooms.

Roots go deeper, looking for that connection
that flows lower every year––
a shrinking lake leaving ringed memories on its edge
like a scrapbook of old loves.

Like that past we all shrink away from,
in living, I desert old loves.
In dying, they desert me.

Is their leaving named for the arid lands that I now ponder,
or is this desert a monument for those who have left first?

This poem was first published ten years ago today, July 10, 2016. I have reformatted the poem.
Photo by Judy Dykstra-Brown

Love Poem to Poets

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Love Poem to Poets

Who am I to judge you as you tinker with words…
reveal their bounce and loop de loop
from Heaven to brutal Hell?
May your poetry never end,
but instead stream in strings of metaphors ,
down that track from up to down
from brain to welcoming heart,
driving the truth to every corner of the world.

For the Sunday Whirl, prompt words are: judge tinker bounce loop heaven brutal end stream string track welcome drive

And also, for dVerse Poets, because these prompt words seemed to lead me back to your prompt as well.

“The Toast” for The Sunday Whirl

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The Toast

He never lost his swagger, even toward the end.
As life tried to break him, the most he did was bend.
When death twisted its cruel blade and his life met its turning,
unholy thoughts consumed me and set my mind to churning.

Will the dead rise up again in search of former love,
or do our dear departeds find more holy lips above?
Does past love wave its banners and proclaim itself in spite
of the fact that one love stays below, completely out of sight?

Love’s table where we feasted has found another host,
and though I hover ’round its edges and listen to the toast
of another bride and bridegroom celebrating love that’s new,
instead, my lover who once was, I lift this glass to you.

For the Sunday Whirl 762 the words are: wave turning unholy lips swagger lost dead rise twist blade feast edges

Give Me Blue for dVerse Poets

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Give Me Blue

If it is a blue with no sadness in it:
the blue of the sky above Colima Volcano
with no other clouds in it except one puff
of earth’s hot breath becoming visible
in the cool morning air.

If it is a blue
with no middle ground of safety,
nothing that makes it ordinary.
No hue of boredom
or gray cast of age.
No tint of ever ending––
just pure blue
holding its mood in,
letting you feel however you want to feel.

The blue of glass that reflects the sky.
Iris blue and periwinkle.
Cerulean and cobalt.

If it is a blue with not a smudge of green in it,
or yellow or white or black.
Blue-blue like my tue love’s eyes
and like the color that a blueberry Popsicle
should be––its blue dusted by nature
as though frosted, even in the heat of summer.
Like blue caught in icicles.

The color of a jellyfish
or Noxzema jar.
Bluebottle fly, tenacious,
only its color not annoying.
Blue as a shiver. Blue as blood. Blue as Hawaii.

Not the blue of a heart before forgetting.
Not that blue with a lot of
dullness soaked into it.
But if you have Blue as in Australia.
Blue as in a first place ribbon.
Sky blue,
true blue,
never blue.

Blue that if it’s ever had one gram of sadness in it,
doesn’t show it.`
If you have that blue,
and you want to give it to me,
then, sure.

 Give me blue.

for dVerse Poets, the prompt is to write an ekphrastic poem about one of the given Chagall paintings.

“You” for The Sunday Whirl

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You

We could share a lifetime in some connected place
and I would never lose my awe of your familiar face.
Years relaxing into it will seem a weekend trip:
mere hours to memorize your mouth––that classic upper lip.
Then when at last we’re in our home, I’ll have the whole of you
emblazoned in my memory with nothing left to do
but to enjoy the “all” of you, not  just your face and form––
that heart and soul and seed of you that creates your corm.

For The Sunday Whirl the prompt words are: lifetime share relax connect place last class awe home will years trip. (A corm is a short, thickened underground plant stem that stores starches and nutrients to fuel the plant’s growth.)

 

Wish List, For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 754

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Wish List

Of course I have my limits, still I wish for something more,
and so I post a list on my refrigerator door.
But those key things I still want in life spill out upon the floor
from the future’s bill of lading where they don’t fit anymore.
Smoke rings from the fires of my dreams gone up in flame
fade into the distance of that future I won’t name.
Still silky thoughts caress my dreams of love and passion past,
and I give thanks for bygone lovers and memories that last.

For the Sunday Whirl Wordle 754  the prompt words are:
limits list still bill smoke ring distant wish silky spill fit key
Image created aided by AI.

“African Love Story” for dVerse Poets

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African Love Story

In this day and age
Almost everyone has a tropical love story.

Show of hands–
How many here?

There was a war.  Danger.
And there were disapproving fathers
And careers.
And yes, I know that some
Love stories survive them all.
But ours didn’t.
And he didn’t.

So just for a year and a few months
We were in love in a warm climate.
A torn love story with a sad ending
With me as its only living remnant.

Imagine yourself
In that story
Full of hormones and atmosphere

It is a meditation remembering
Sand and moonlight under the Southern Cross.
Or cocks crowing before you fell asleep
Long rolling nights in a village
Where almost no one spoke your language.

Perhaps you were a prisoner of love
As I was years ago.
Non-protesting, dizzy and dumb for passion.

Would I have stayed for love if I’d known
It was the whole business of love I’d leave behind,
And not just my beloved?

Would you?

 

 

The dVerse prompt is ‘Where Does Love Go?”

At a Distance for Word of the Day, Jan 6, 2026

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At a Distance

Although you may be absent, thoughts of you still linger.
I think you have my memory wound around your finger,
for though I find the lack of you totally endurable,
my memory suffers from a need that’s totally incurable.
Friends may think the distance between us is a pity,
and yet with one so erudite, so pithy, loyal and witty,
it seems you linger on even after you are bound
off to other regions—your presence a mere sound
heard over the telephone, imagined o’er the keys,
so I may have your company any time I please.
Relationships are more, my dear, than a simple presence.
Sometimes merely words suffice to conjure up your essence.

 

I am answering this challenge with a poem written in 2016–ten years ago. If you are still curious about this untypical relationship described in the poem above, read more about it HERE
and then HERE.

For Word of the Day Challenge, the word is Distance.

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.