Tag: love poem

Seasonal Love Song

Late Summer's Sun

Late summer's sun has baked the grass to brown.
The days grow shorter with each passing day, 
Soon, autumn's chill will make the leaves fall down.
All of this aching beauty will decay.

And yet I love the shadow's slanting trace.
The once green grain gone golden in its rows.
And how I love the lines etched in your face.
It's funny, as love ripens how it grows.

The number of our days we do not know.
No sleeper knows if he will ever wake.
So come, let's join above, between, below.
My dear, let's cause our fragile clay to quake.
Let us make love as if it's our last go.
Let us embrace like dawn will never break.

Living in Florida has discombobulated my internal calendar. With none of the old familiar clues, autumn snuck up on me this year. I’ve resorted to flipping through old photos to get a sense of what fall feels like. Here’s a little sonnet from 2015 written when I was spending a lot of time away from home for work, and obviously missing my wife.

P.S.: Psychology Today says that our master circadian clock — the one that keeps track of the seasons is called the Suprachiasmatic Nucleus, which contains about 20,000 nerve cells and is located in the hypothalamus. Gonna have to take their word for it.

On the Eve of Independence Day

THAT DAY WE LAY UPON THE GRASS

That day we lay upon the grass,
    A luminescent green.
The sparks that arced from arm to arm
    Across the space between.

Our bodies quickened by the sun,
    The willow leaves aflush.
The sunlight sparkling on the lake,
    Our blood bestirred to rush.

Up and down the parkway, flowers
    Enticing with their blooms.
Our loveless winter ended there,
    Emerging from our tombs.

For we had slept as sleepers slept,
    Unmindful of the world.
Astonishingly we awoke,
    Much like a rose unfurled.

(2015)

Some 42 years ago I worked as a journalist for a community newspaper in the suburbs of Minneapolis. I still have my pocket appointment calendar from that time. Along with recording the times and dates of city council meetings, photo ops, and interviews, it documents the progress of an uncanny romance.

We were two weary pilgrims, up to that point unlucky at love, but brought together by providence.

The calendar entry for Saturday, July 3, 1982: “Bike ride, sunning.” And then, emphatically, “1ST KISS.”

I’m a big fan of July 4th, but July 3rd is my own personal holiday.

Love and flowers and happy birthday

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
One 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.

(2016)

Notes: My love was born on D-Day, and I don’t think I’ve ever failed to remember her birthday. It’s an appropriate date because she conquered me from the beginning. I didn’t stand a chance.

Flowers did play a significant role in our courtship. I really did pull over and pick some roadside lilacs before our first date. (And she really was glowing the very first time I saw her. A story for another time.)

Poem in Praise of Freedom

In praise of freedom

INDEPENDENCE DAY

The wind and you played in my hair,
+++You lambent in the moon,
The night arranged as by design,
+++Mysteriously boon.

Afresh the breeze and warm our hands,
+++So lately introduced,
Traced so gently new found lands,
+++From tyranny aloosed.

While all around with fire and bang
+++Our freedom was proclaimed,
A nation’s liberty was meant,
+++To us, two hearts unchained.

(1982)

As we reflect on our nation’s past, I’m reminded of a bit of personal history. Some 38 years ago, a couple of crazy kids snuck up to the roof of the Calhoun Beach Club in Minneapolis to watch fireworks.

They didn’t quite realize it yet, but they were falling in love. Like our country, they were not perfect. But, like our country, they had tasted the mercy of Jesus and dreamed of a more perfect union.

We’re still working on it.

Anniversary Poem

Flowers and love in bloom

That Day We Lay Upon the Grass

That day we lay upon the grass,
+++A luminescent green.
The sparks that arced from arm to arm
+++Across the space between.

Our bodies quickened by the sun,
+++The willow leaves aflush,
The sunlight sparkling on the lake,
+++Our blood bestirred to rush.

Up and down the parkway, flowers
+++Enticing with their blooms,
Our loveless winter ended there,
+++Emerging from our tombs

For we had slept as sleepers sleep,
+++Unmindful of the world,
Astonishingly we awoke,
+++Much like a rose unfurled.

(2015)

Some 38 years ago two wanderers, unlucky at love, stumbled upon each other. Magic ensued.

It took me three years, but I finally persuaded her to marry me. I’m now a lucky guy, blessed beyond measure.

Love in the time of corona

Spring blossoms on our well-worn path

Familiar Ways

I choose to walk the old familiar ways,
To wend ways where I’ve put my foot before,
To gaze anew on views seen other days,
Which, though familiar, never seem to bore.

The changing light and seasons have their ways
Of making old things new: The light-laced hoar,
The first-flush, green-glow, bursting-forth spring days,
The growing tinge of gold we can’t ignore.

Each day, my dear, I choose afresh our trail,
The one we blazed so many years ago,
Eschewing other routes that might avail,
And hewing to the well-worn way we know.
Forsaking novelty need be no jail
With your face bathed in sunset’s golden glow.

(2016)

NOTES: March is arguable the most beautiful time in the Pacific Northwest. The days are growing longer. Yellow daffodils are rampant. And the ornamental plum and pear and cherry trees are exploding with pink blossoms.

In normal times, my only quibble with March is that it also brings on the dusting of alder pollen, which makes me sneeze. (Has anyone ever established a good reason for alder trees to have been created? I am skeptical.)

But these are not normal times. As with the rest of America and most of the world, we are in the grip of the global coronavirus pandemic. As a result, most of us have been largely confined to our homes, venturing out on only the most urgent matters. We are taking shelter in our homes like characters in some post-apocalyptic movie, waiting for the worst to pass.

We can still get out and take walks (as long as we observe the proper “social distancing” by moving 10 feet away when we meet passers-by.) Given our current semi-quarantined status, I don’t care how high the pollen count. I’m going for a walk to look at the scenery!

As I walk, I almost always take the same routes through our semi-rural suburban neighborhood making sure to include as many hills as possible. I’ve been walking it for years but it never gets boring.

In times like this, you take stock of what’s really important.

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

 

Sonnet for Late Summer

The grass has turned to brown

Late Summer’s Sun

Late summer’s sun has baked the grass to brown.
The days grow shorter with each passing day,
Soon, autumn’s chill will make the leaves fall down.
All of this aching beauty will decay.

And yet I love the shadows’ slanting trace,
The once green grain gone golden in its rows,
And how I love the lines etched in your face.
It’s funny, as love ripens how it grows.

The number of our days we do not know.
No sleeper knows if he will ever wake.
So come, let’s join above, between, below.
My dear, let’s cause our fragile clay to quake.
Let us make love as if it’s our last go.
Let us embrace like dawn will never break.

(2015)

Notes:  T.S. Eliot said April was the cruelest month. I disagree. I think it’s August. The ground is parched, the foliage is showing its mortality, and it’s clear that we’ve passed high summer and we’re on the downhill slide. Nothing gold can stay and the highway dust is over all.

Extra credit to any poetry geek who can spot the homage to John Donne in this poem.

 

 

Who says poetry doesn’t pay?

THE PASSIONATE WRITER TO HIS LOVE

Come live with me and be my love,
Assured before you voice your fears
That we will meld as hand to glove
With tender wearing through the years.

How could I love another more,
Or ever you abandon me?
So come, our prospects let’s explore
Assay our hopes in honesty.

I’ll write old-fashioned poems for you,
The kind that sing with foot and rhyme,
To soothe your ear and gently woo
Your cautious heart in its due time.

We’ll stay abed when springtime rains,
And care not if it’s ever done;
We’ll pedal wooded country lanes,
And bask beneath a merry sun.

In lilac-time I’ll break for you
The heart-shaped leaf and purple bloom
That flourished when our love was new,
And filled the night with strong perfume.

Like hardy husbandmen of old,
Who ploughed and tilled the fertile soil,
We’ll give ourselves to labors bold,
And harvest children for our toil.

And when the winter of our years
Bespecks our thinning hair with snow,
We’ll stoke our fire against the fear,
Companions though the chill winds blow.

Relentless time moves on apace,
Time leaves its vanquished under stone.
But we can win at time’s own race
By choosing not to run alone.

Defying reason, let’s unite
To form a sturdy three-fold cord,
A braid miraculously tight,
Of bridegroom, bride and gentle Lord.

If my proposal your love stirs,
If this be your desire for life,
If to my faith your heart avers,
Come live with me and be my wife.

(1985)

Notes: In what has become a somewhat of a tradition, I share my proposal poem to Jan on the occasion of our anniversary.

I sprung it on her 34 years ago. Thankfully, she didn’t think it was too goofy, but she didn’t give me an official response on the spot. She made me sweat until the next day. We went out to brunch at a now-defunct Minneapolis restaurant staffed by hippies who hadn’t gotten the memo that the ’70s were over.

When I dug into my scrambled eggs, I noticed a folded piece of paper. It was grease-soaked and writing from the other side was showing through. I thought one of the yogi-fry cooks had lost his Sanskrit prayer in my breakfast. I was about to send it back when Jan urged me to unfold the note and read it.

It was her response. She had slipped her note to the waitress and had her hide it under the eggs. Jan had taken the last verse of the poem and turned each line around into an affirmative response.

Somehow we managed to misplace that grease-laden scrap of paper. Pity, it would have been a treasured keepsake. But I’m pretty sure her response went like this:

Yes, your proposal my love stirs,
Yes, this be my desire for life,
Yes, to your faith my heart avers,
I’ll live with you and be your wife.

 

I was delighted and didn’t mind a bit that she adapted my poem for her answer.

How could I mind? I had shamelessly ripped off the first line myself from Christopher Marlowe’s poem “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love.”

My proposal may not have been wholly original poetry, but it did the trick. She said “yes.”

The funny thing is … soon after that I wound up practicing direct marketing copywriting as my day job.

After my experience with this poem, I should have known I was destined for direct marketing. The poem was my very first direct marketing letter.

I got a 100% response rate. Retention has been solid, and long-term value excellent.

Thank you, Christopher Marlowe.

Sonnet for Love in Late Summer

Wine barrel signed by Orson Welles

“We’ll Sell No Wine…”

“We’ll sell no wine before its time,” we’re told.
The fat and famous spokesman made it clear,
Each vintage has its period of gold.
(You must assess the pressing and the year.)

So, likewise, for each vintage comes a time
The point past which there’s no return at all.
Decay and oxidation work their crime,
And turn your sweetest nectar into gall.

So come, my dear, what are we waiting for?
Our cellar holds a few more bottles still.
Pick one and brush away the dust before
Time turns its contents back to must — time will.
Cast off our caution and our clothes and pour,
And drink with joy until we’ve had our fill.

(2016)

Photo courtesy of TripAdvisor

NOTES: The shorter days and fainter light of September are stirring all sorts of poignant feelings. Something about this time of year makes me want to haul this old poem out of the cellar one more time.

I’m old enough to remember when Orson Welles employed his considerable talent to pitch some middle-of-the-road wine back in the late 1970s. He had been a celebrated actor, who had co-written, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane, what many still consider the best film ever made.

But he was difficult to work with, and had trouble raising money for his projects.  So he turned to advertising to pay the bills. His Paul Masson spots where he declared, “We will sell no wine before its time,” are classic examples of great advertising.

Paul Masson sales reportedly rose by 33% while that campaign ran.

Honeymoon sonnet

Honeymoon epiphany

Epiphanies

We come now to the winter of our years
(Where did the autumn with its pleasures go?)
Our roof will all too soon be cloaked with snow,
So, come, let’s stoke our fire against the fears.

It seems another life ago, my dear,
That full of grace you pilgrim sat aglow
Enkindled so this prodigal would know
That grace was free and grace was very near.

Midsummer’s eve brought more epiphanies
Of spotless bride adorned, redeemed, in white,
Too ill for customary liberties,
So wan, yet still for these sore eyes a sight.
Then! Over Lake Champlain the full moon sees
A railway sleeper car rock through the night.

(2013)

Notes:

When love is good and it lasts, it can be tempting to idealize its beginnings.

But, the very first time I saw my wife, she was glowing. I kid you not. Sitting in the second row of a darkened auditorium listening to the Chaplain of the U.S. Senate, there she was — surrounded by a golden aura.

At the time, I was a reporter for a small suburban weekly paper, and was there on assignment. I had a camera, but was so befuddled I failed to get the shot. (Of the Glowing Girl, that is.) You might argue I was imagining things, but I don’t think so. I’m not given to visions nor hallucinations. I’ve never witnessed anything like it before or since.

I kept my eye on her while I got my story. But at the end of the program, she went right up to the speaker. I figured she must be with the group of important people who had accompanied him from Washington, D.C.

So, I put The Glowing Girl out of mind and tried to forget about her.

Fortunately for me, she turned up again a couple of weeks later at church. It turns out she was a friend of a friend, who introduced us and immediately left us alone. I didn’t let her get away a second time.

I think the whole experience was a special gift for a fellow a bit slow on the uptake, who needed a sign to notice a good thing right under my nose.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

We were married three years later at Midsummer. She was sick and only made it through the festivities with the help of cold medicine. The next morning we flew out of town to New York, and the very next night, took an overnight train to Montreal.

I’ve been a fan of railway travel ever since.