Tag: lips

From the poet to his love playing hard to get

Don't shield your limbs below nor lips above

LUMBERJACK LOVE

Though I am not a bearded man nor burly,
I love you with a lumberjack-type love.
The only axe I take in hand securely,
This meager pen across the page I shove.

Please treat me not so fickle nor so surly,
Don’t shield your limbs below nor lips above.
I aim to fell you skillfully and purely;
Each word’s to chip the bark around your love.

(1982)

NOTES: Seems like everyone’s felt like this at one point or another.

Van Morrison said, “I got hit by a bow and arrow, got me down to the very marrow.” John Lee Hooker said, “Baby please don’t go.”  The Bee Gees, said, “It’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away.”

Just a Little Lumberjack Love Poem

Don't shield your limbs below nor lips above

LUMBERJACK LOVE

Though I am not a bearded man nor burly,
I love you with a lumberjack-type love.
The only axe I take in hand securely,
This meager pen across the page I shove.

Please treat me not so fickle nor so surly,
Don’t shield your limbs below nor lips above.
I aim to fell you skillfully and purely;
Each word’s to chip the bark around your love.

(1982)

NOTES: Van Morrison said, “I got hit by a bow and arrow, got me down to the very marrow.” John Lee Hooker said, “Baby please don’t go.”  The Bee Gees, said, “It’s only words, and words are all I have to take your heart away.”

Poem for Flower Time

I kissed you first in tulip time

Flower Time

I saw you first in jonquil time,
When you were bathed in grace.
You sat aglow with fire sublime,
And golden shone your face.

I loved you first in lilac time.
A bloom I plucked for you.
I wrote you verse with song and rhyme.
I hoped you loved me too.

I kissed you first in tulip time,
It must have been a sign.
The buds and we were in our prime
When your two lips met mine.

I married you in daisy time
On summer’s longest day.
We traded rings and heard bells chime.
We pledged always to stay.

Too soon we’ve come to aster time.
The days are shorter now.
Would stealing some be such a crime?
We’ll make it right somehow.

Should we endure ’til wintertime,
The time when flowers sleep,
Dreams we’ll share of a gentler clime
Where we no more shall weep.

Notes:  A bit of controversy arose when I last posted this poem.  The object of this verse pointed out to me that tulip time generally comes before lilac time, and thus the poem was out of chronological order.

My appeal to poetic license did not, I feel, fully satisfy her.  But I have resisted the pressure to revise the poem to make it more consistent to botanical facts.  That’s because my recollection of the events of so many years ago was that I was completely and hopelessly in love before the first kiss.

Sometimes we should not allow the facts to get in the way of a good story.

And I did stop by the roadside and pick some lilacs for our first date.

(2016)

Sonnet Upon Seeing a Photograph

Doing what brides' mothers always do

Please Tell Me

Tell me the photograph I lately spied
While idly searching round the internet,
One of a greying woman and a bride,
A common scene of longing and regret,

She’s fussing with the buttons and the dress,
Just doing what brides’ mothers often do
To stall the creeping sense of uselessness …
Please tell me that this woman isn’t you.

Her eyes are heavy-lidded widow’s eyes,
Not wide and worshipful how I recall.
Her weary face with sorrow etched likewise,
Not fresh and freckled tempting me to fall.
Her lips so tightly clenched that I surmise
These can’t be lips that once held me in thrall.

Notes:  Not that I need any more reminders, but time is moving on.  I — and those I have known and loved and lost — are getting older.  And life is not always kind.

Robert Frost said, “Nothing gold can stay.”

Robert Herrick said, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins said, “It is the blight man was born for.”

I say … well, you can read the poem …

©Bobby Ball 2018 (written 2018)

Love poem

I loved you first in lilac time

Flower Time

I saw you first in jonquil time,
When you were bathed in grace.
You sat aglow with fire sublime,
And golden shone your face.

I loved you first in lilac time.
A bloom I plucked for you.
I wrote you verse with song and rhyme.
I hoped you loved me too.

I kissed you first in tulip time,
It must have been a sign.
The buds and we were in our prime
When your two lips met mine.

I married you in daisy time
On summer’s longest day.
We traded rings and heard bells chime.
We pledged always to stay.

Too soon we’ve come to aster time.
The days are shorter now.
Would stealing some be such a crime?
We’ll make it right somehow.

Should we endure ’til wintertime,
The time when flowers sleep,
Dreams we’ll share of a gentler clime
Where we no more shall weep.

NOTES:  Today is Valentine’s Day, and it’s unseasonably warm here in the Pacific Northwest.  It won’t be long before the jonquils and crocuses start poking their heads up through the mulch.

And it won’t be much longer than that before my favorite  — the lilacs — grace us with their fragrance and beauty.

It’s a good day for a modest little love poem.