Do we really need another dippy love poem?
Well of course we do. What a question. “Every man should plant a tree, have a child and write a book.” So says the Talmud and/or Cuban patriot and writer Jose Martí. Everyone should also write a poem of love. At least one time. This poem was written for someone born on Christmas day.
Oh how your heart does sing to me
Oh how your heart does sing to me
and how my own does answer back to you.
The sound of your touch and impassioned eyes
tell me, though my heart’s for you alone,
still I love with half the power
of the higher truth I see in you.
I cannot keep my feet beneath me
yet never have I wanted more to slip away
into the moist, enfolding seclusion of you
to lay forever, I would choose.
The meaning of myself is found in us
tracing the pathways of our union
over stepping stones of sighs and laughter
together breathing in catches and starts
that mimic the silky staccato ascent
of notes on quarter tone trumpets.
When I find myself too inward dwelling
on dull cares of the present day
I recall the memories we have made
and treasures you and I have laid away.
I look again, and in the time it takes a star
to shoot between the treetops and the roof
you embrace me so completely
the moment becomes an icon for all we are.
Curled on the couch, through coffee steam,
you squeeze my stocking feet and tell me
“I will invite Santa Claus into my bed.”
It’s way more than can be explained
in a barely rhyming love song
twenty-three years, seven months,
fourteen days in the making.
Larry Moffitt
Dec 25, 2002
