Abelard
Physicists say often that the moon does not shine without the sun, and that when deprived of this light, it is robbed of all benefit of heat and brightness and presents to humans a dark ashen sphere.
Pablo Neruda
SONNET XVII
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
that this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
Love Sonnet XI
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,And I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
Gerald May
(The Awakened Heart)
There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake. It is the human desire for love. Every person in this earth yearns to love, to be loved, to know love. Our true identity, our reason for being, is to be found in this desire…
…love is the ‘why’ of life: why we are functioning at all, what we want to be efficient for… I am convinced it [love] is the fundamental energy of the human spirit, the fuel on which we run, the wellspring of our vitality. And grace, which is the flowing, creative activity of love itself, is what makes all goodness possible.
Love should come first; it should be the beginning of and the reason for everything.
Oriah
Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart, and I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.
Show me how you take care of business without letting business determine who you are. When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us, shout that soul’s desires have too high a price, let us remind each other that it is never about the money.
Show me how you offer to your people and the world the stories and the songs you want our children’s children to remember, and I will show you how I struggle, not to change the world, but to love it.
Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude, knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging. Dance with me in the silence and the sound of small daily words, holding neither against me at the end of the day.
And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest intentions has died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.
Don’t say, “Yes!” Just take my hand and dance with me.
Heloise
To half my heart and part of my soul: what I am I entrust to you. I am yours as long as I live.
Plato
(Halcyon)
The universe gifts us with more blessings than we can ever understand.
It is one of the grand ironies of being human: Such big brains, and so little comprehension of the gift of every moment.
But sometimes the universe makes it very easy for us. Sometimes we have experiences that transcend the circumstances of our daily lives and help us feel the gift of existence itself.
… like when the sun sets so beautifully that the world starts and ends in that moment.
… like when we glimpse into a babies eyes and are reminded of a truth we always knew.
… like when a dormant branch buds its perfect green leaves – teaching us its eternal cycle of spring renewal.
… or like when two beautiful, loving souls find one another, let their love blossom, and form a union of their lives.
This love is a gift from the universe. It is a gift to the universe.
The universe itself is made warmer and more loving by the path they walk together.
We are all blessed to be here, but the gift of this love doesn’t end at these walls or in the memories of the people here.
Like that perfect sunset casting brilliant color across the horizon, their loving union casts love across all our lives – reminding us of what this journey is all about.
James Joyce
(Ulysses)
I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
Amy Lowell
A Decade
When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.
