The love I have learned from loves given to me,
brought to me with shining gestures, and rotating gently,
this love—brought with me intact from my childhood
into this present fractured adult life—
swells uncertainly within me.
Past loves, brightly lit once and ornamented,
fell—rested in me without light at all.
With darknesses throughout me
I was waiting just to see
if those passions would arise again—be
fulfilled—if you would love me.
Those loves, left behind, replaced when I found you
by new love for the plainly honest forces formed in you,
were they strong enough for me to remember?
Suddenly I was slowing to a standstill. I stopped
until you showed me:
I was relishing the future and the past.
My life—here it was present at last,
a decorated song sung in a sentimental voice,
happy, willing at last to concede now
that I am all I need now.
Mightily, assuredly, you stood in front of me with grandeur and grace.
The patterns of the stars were held in your face,
the universe behind you.
The sun arose simply at your command, for me.
And I was leading, following, fixed and free.
You were beside me
in a garden of vines and ivy
while the seasons rumbled by us—but not strong enough to harm.
You dazzled back by smiling, charming in your lack of consciousness
and without trying entranced me.
I was waiting for a sign, a reassuring touch,
a touch that might know distances but not grow cold,
a hand to hold me.
Quietly, strangely, I remember the first time I looked inward:
the person I was seeing could not possibly be me.
The reflection of a child,
the mystery of me that was implied—
these things were strange, my own past holding me tight, tied.
I did not know I was free.
How I was loved then—
I was coddled and tender and young then.
In the softness of the rooms around me I was safe and warm.
The songs circled around me, brought me closer to the day I found you—
I found life because I learned a harmony for every love given to me.
And when final chords fade I still will have these loves—
our loves—to hold to.