Love Poems

  Leaf in Fall I feel hard without my love at my side; she is the part of me that lacks the soft buoyancy that rounds and bears me aloft into the spring sky mirrored in the tide… without her I wear my own prickly hide, itch in it like...

  I Spent My Youth with Byron and the Bard I spent my youth with Byron and the Bard, With Tennyson, the Brownings, and dear Keats— And full of passions, eager, trying hard To imitate their lofty, noble feats, I found it true: the human heart does pump In echo...

  I woke this day from napping, and I saw you lying there, Across the room, upon a couch, asleep without a care. The golden beams of twilight streaming through the windowpane, Shone wondrously upon you like a rainbow in the rain. Through moving trees, the filtered sunlight fell upon...

  I face the day with unexpected strength, to know we’ll meet when the sun has disappeared. Your hand in mine we’ll walk the forest’s length, with peace of mind and nothing to be feared. I know the day may bring me to my knee, And I know that they...

  It is a moment or a spot in time, When time is quieted and put away; A simple thing becoming the sublime, Suspended and eternal in a day And all around me just dissolves to naught; I feel my world around me disappears; It is just me before you—I...

Where the Heart Goes Where the heart decides to go, The feet must go along. The heart is first to know A thing is right or wrong. The heart knows who to trust. The heart knows who to fight. The feet go where they must Into the mists of night....

When we listen To his sweet song, Did he then know It'd live this long? A song that gives To every age, A timeless sense Of history's page. Reminding you, Reminding me, Love songs can last Eternity. From age-to-age Repeating ways Of loving one Across our days. We know it's...

That I Might Learn to Love a villanelle That I might learn to love I sorely prayed with hopes that God might teach me by romance as yearning I the empty sky surveyed. Yet lovers marched in cumbersome parade so out of step and void of real advance that I...

O how I long to hold thee in my arms, And taste again of nature’s sweet reprieve, To cast off masks, false affectations, charms; To savor all I had before you leave. For thee alone I lie awake at night, Tortured by the memories unmade, For that alone I scorn...

Today the Wind for Elizabeth Today the wind through winter’s unclad bones Drowns in its woeful howl my soul’s discant; Beyond, a distant hunter’s oliphant Salutes the dead beneath their frost-bound stones. Today the wind sweet music’s loss bemoans, No more to laud, beneath this canopy Of slate-grey clouds, thy...

  “Jingle Bells, jingle all the way” I sang to her to break the spell of what appeared to be her fell demeanor. Neither would she bray ‘in a one horse open sleigh’ “Hey!” but droned as if to undersell the joyous sense that all was well. She seemed more...

For Elizabeth On the Poet’s Eleventh Wedding Anniversary   Though you behold me silent in this room, Know that I walk in fields of fresh-cut hay; Though I be still, my thoughts like roses bloom And run with clouds across the vault of day. The west wind summons me beyond...