1247 Love poems

I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair, Borne, like a vapor, on the summer air; I see her tripping where the bright streams play, Happy as the daisies that dance on her way. Many were the wild notes her merry voice would pour. Many were the blithe birds that warbled them o’er: Oh! I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair, Floating, like a vapor, on the soft summer air. I long for Jeanie with the daydawn smile, Radiant in gladness, warm with winning guile; I hear her melodies, like joys gone by, Sighing round my heart o’er the fond hopes that die:— Sighing like the night wind and sobbing like the rain,— Wailing for the lost one that comes not again: Oh! I long for Jeanie, and my heart bows low, Never more to find her where the bright waters flow. I sigh for Jeanie, but her light form strayed Far from the fond hearts round her native glade; Her smiles have vanished and her sweet songs flown, Flitting like the dreams that have cheered us and gone. Now the nodding wild flowers may wither on the shore While her gentle fingers will cull them no more: Oh! I sigh for Jeanie with the light brown hair, Floating, like a vapor, on the soft summer air.

a ladybug, its carapace blown open so a translucent trace of orange gleams from its body, has ascended link by link the smudgy silver curve of my watch band. It must have helicoptered past the sill while I was slumped here squinting in the paper at the ashen packaging another bombing's made of a minivan. Made available in the photo like the homeless in a poem. The pain is far away. But then for moments utterly clear: molten metal guttering down from the Milky Way to fall on us. And sometimes, God, it lands with all its will. My spluttered prayer for it to hold its distance: how ludicrous to blurt it from this comfort. Still it impels itself from me. Please stay away from me. Please stay away from this insectile soul who only weeks ago was wind and shit and jasmine leaves and rain.

I take the bird on the woodpile, separate it from its function, feather by feather. I blow up its scale. I make a whole life out of it: everywhere I am, its sense of loitering lights on my shoulder.

Into these loves, who but for passion looks, At this first sight here let him lay them by And seek elsewhere in turning other books, Which better may his labour satisfy. No far-fetch'd sigh shall ever wound my breast; Love from mine eye a tear shall never wring; Nor in "Ah me's!" my whining sonnets drest: A libertine, fantasticly I sing. My verse is the true image of my mind, Ever in motion, still desiring change; And as thus to variety inclin'd, So in all humours sportively I range: My Muse is rightly of the English strain, That cannot long one fashion entertain.

If love now reigned as it hath been And were rewarded as it hath sin, Noble men then would sure ensearch All ways whereby they might it reach, But envy reigneth with such disdain And causeth lovers outwardly to refrain, Which puts them to more and more Inwardly most grievous and sore. The fault in whom I cannot set, But let them tell which love doth get— To lovers I put now sure this case: Which of their loves doth get them grace? And unto them which doth it know Better than do I, I think it so.

What seemed a mystery was in fact a choice. Insert bird for sorrow. What seemed a memory was in fact a dividing line. Insert bird for wind. Insert wind for departure when everyone is standing still. Insert three mountains burning and in three valleys a signal seer seeing a distant light and a signal bearer sprinting to a far-off bell. What seemed a promise was in fact a sigh. What seemed a hot wind, a not quite enough, a forgive me, it has flown away, is in fact. In the meantime we paint the floors red. We stroke the sound of certain names into a fine floss that drifts across our teeth. We stay in the room we share and listen all night to what drifts through the window— dog growl, owl call, a fleet of mosquitoes setting sail, and down the road, the swish of tomorrow’s donkey-threshed grain.

Turning to watch you leave, I see we must always walk toward other loves, river of   heaven between two office buildings. Orphaned cloud, fish soup poppling, book spined in the open palm. Unstoppable light. I think it is all right. Or do tonight, garden toad a speaking stone, young sound in an old heart. Annul the self? I float it, a day lily in my wine. Oblivion? I love our lives, keeping me from it.

How do you know if it’s love? she asks, and I think if you have to ask, it’s not, but I know this won’t help. I want to say you’re too young to worry about it, as if she has questions about Medicare or social security, but this won’t help either. “You’ll just know” is a lie, and one truth, “when you still want to be with them the next morning,” would involve too many follow-up questions. The difficulty with love, I want to say, is sometimes you only know afterwards that it’s arrived or left. Love is the elephant and we are the blind mice unable to understand the whole. I want to say love is this desire to help even when I know I can’t, just as I couldn’t explain electricity, stars, the color of the sky, baldness, tornadoes, fingernails, coconuts, or the other things she has asked about over the years, all those phenomena whose daily existence seems miraculous. Instead I shake my head. I don’t even know how to match my socks. Go ask your mother. She laughs and says, I did. Mom told me to come and ask you.

I asked myself What, Sappho, can you give one who has everything, like Aphrodite?

I did something I could never discuss made an acquaintance and embraced him in a phone booth. While interested parties lurked among free newspaper boxes he removed his domino. What to construe from leather bracelets? The impossibility of translation from a phone booth to a churchyard a gate painted white a belfry with no bell some culture with haceks the sense of lolling in a park from a churchyard to a community garden heckling the rooster as it crowed. We left the part we liked jeering the rooster from a sward. We reentered the garden with a script but refused to expand on the vestiges of happiness. A girl took responsibility for the garden and plied us with background information until her nervous guardian sent us back to the church with a coat of arms where we were going anyway as though under the influence of boreal fluid. The songbirds of the yard were about to be contaminated by a new age concert. With so little at stake they praised positive thinking.