Love

All posts tagged Love

Love Poem

Published July 12, 2012 by rlmcdermott

This is the way to love a man–
pursuing him down dimly-lit theologies,
wrestling him to the ground,
undressing him with your eyes
until he is only bleached bone.

Jacob knew this as he lay
prostate on the ground beneath
the furious muscle of his lover’s arms;
his heart beat in his chest
as if a god had touched him
and not another man.

The excuses we make to ourselves
when we love, not with the senses,
but with the deep, murmuring
memory of a time when flowers
grew inside our cells and we
were all pistil and stamen and
certain that connection was only
dependent on ourselves.

The Apple Tree

Published June 12, 2012 by rlmcdermott

When I was
seventeen
I was old–
a girl in a window
about to be brought
and sold by grief.

The tree across
the street
knew my name
and called
it every night
to comfort me–
a murmuring refrain
of leaf on leaf.

I asked it questions,
will I be happy,
will I find love,
will I survive,
until it could
not answer–
so overwhelmed
it ceased to sing
and stood silent.

My only friend,
that tree, stopped
singing to me
because it could
not bear my sadness;
and in the fall it fell,
yellow, gold and red,
it bent its head
and wept us both
into a living death.

Kyoto Botanical Garden

Published June 1, 2012 by rlmcdermott

What kind of trees
were they that
broke the color–

all tall and green
and dancing
in the slow sunlight
of an April afternoon?

Women in blue
kimonos stood
beneath the
delicate branches
snapping pictures
digital and bright.

Children played,
young mother’s
strolled, stooped
old men finished
with their lives
sat on stone benches.

An artist crouched
in a flower bed
like a wounded animal;
linen canvas stained
with a furious red.

I had come here to meet a
god and found instead a man.

We are not seen by the people we love,
but are loved by the people who see us.

That afternoon,
five thousand miles
from my home,
someone saw me
and asked where
I was from in
perfect English.

Job Description

Published May 23, 2012 by rlmcdermott

I grew outside your
window. I came every
evening and knocked
at your door. I
kept watch in the
sky while you slept.
I was there, I was constant
and I was invisible.

I was the moon,
I was the shadow
in the field at sunset,
I was the red poppy,
the blue hydrangea,
the yellow coneflower.

This is who I was
and who I wasn’t;
I was all things
to you and I was nothing.

I will never love
like this again–with
such an open hand.
Remember when you
can remember nothing;
I was the song in the wind,
the flower in the garden,
the moon in the moonlight,
the memory in the forgetting.