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[acapriwrite]

Poems for the Month of Love

This February I revisited some of my favorite poems about love. Some of them filled my heart with warmth and love the first time I read them. Some of them just feel what loving, in reality, is like. Let me know what’s your favorite.

1. All Because You Kissed Me Goodnight by Sandy Rolstan

I climbed up the door and opened the stairs, Said my pajamas and put on my prayers, Then I turned off the bed and crawled into the light, All because you kissed me goodnight!

Next morning I woke up and scrambled my shoes, Picked up my eggs and toasted the news, I couldn’t tell my left from right, All because you kissed me goodnight!

That evening at last I felt normal again, So I picked up my mother and called the phone, I spoke to the puppy and threw Dad a bone, Even at midnight the sun was still bright, All because you kissed me goodnight!

2. How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

3. Unending Love by Rabindranath Tagore

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times… In life after life, in age after age, forever. My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs, That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms, In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain, Its ancient tale of being apart or together. As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge, Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time: You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount. At the heart of time, love of one for another. We have played alongside millions of lovers, shared in the same Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell- Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you The love of all man’s days both past and forever: Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life. The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours – And the songs of every poet past and forever.

4. Heart to Heart by Rita Dove

It’s neither red nor sweet. It doesn’t melt or turn over, break or harden, so it can’t feel pain, yearning, regret.

It doesn’t have a tip to spin on, it isn’t even shapely— just a thick clutch of muscle, lopsided, mute. Still, I feel it inside its cage sounding a dull tattoo: I want, I want—

but I can’t open it: there’s no key. I can’t wear it on my sleeve, or tell you from the bottom of it how I feel. Here, it’s all yours, now— but you’ll have to take me, too.

5. For Keeps by Joy Harjo

Sun makes the day new. Tiny green plants emerge from earth. Birds are singing the sky into place. There is nowhere else I want to be but here. I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us. We gallop into a warm, southern wind. I link my legs to yours and we ride together, Toward the ancient encampment of our relatives. Where have you been? they ask. And what has taken you so long? That night after eating, singing, and dancing We lay together under the stars. We know ourselves to be part of mystery. It is unspeakable. It is everlasting. It is for keeps.

6. When I Tell My Husband I Miss the Sun, He Knows by Paige Lewis

what I really mean. He paints my name

across the floral bed sheet and ties the bottom corners to my ankles. Then he paints another

for himself. We walk into town and play the shadow game, saying Oh! I'm sorry for stepping on your

shadow! and Please be careful! My shadow is caught in the wheels of your shopping cart. It's all very polite.

Our shadows get dirty just like anyone's, so we take them to the Laundromat—the one with

the 1996 Olympics themed pinball machine— and watch our shadows warm

against each other. We bring the shadow game home and (this is my favorite part) when we

stretch our shadows across the bed, we get so tangled my husband grips his own wrist,

certain it's my wrist, and kisses it.

7. Poem I wrote sitting across the table from you by Kevin Varrone

if I had two nickels to rub together I would rub them together

like a kid rubs sticks together until friction made combustion

and they burned a hole in my pocket

into which I would put my hand and then my arm

and eventually my whole self–– I would fold myself

into the hole in my pocket and disappear into the pocket of myself, or at least my pants

but before I did like some ancient star

I’d grab your hand

[acapriwrite]

Welcome to my writing space!

How are you doing splendid creature? I also find it a wonder how you found your way here ✨

You can call me Capri. I love reading, writing, and watching movies and TV shows. On this page, I'll strive to write as much as I can about anything under the sun, but mostly about life, realizations, and literature. I hope you learn something here and most of all, have fun 💖