This is the last poem of a group of poems that I wrote several years ago, and submitted for publication then and more recently.
The source of love is the lover
It was with you
I began to understand
the power of the source and the
catalyst;
the necessity of the impulse to support
the action
and of the action to realise the
intention.
To say I love, I must love.
How late I come to this,
and surely there’s more.
The endeavour is perilous;
we reach for the heart only to recoil
when our fingers encounter skin.
Or we are halted just by a look,
dismayed when a shaft of light
jolts the beloved into negative relief.
But I saw it played out before me,
in a man’s face contorted with pain
and the effort of expression:
there is no guilt involved.
We give of ourselves to make it true, to
make it love;
we relinquish nothing.
It is the holding back,
the holding on,
that causes loss.
And the loss is always our own.
(First published in New Contrast 165 Vol 42, No 1)
