Although my days are packed with coaching, graduate school, yoga, and massage, I still try to sneak in time to read poetry. These are a few of my favorite poems for you for Valentine’s Day.
San Antonio Tonight I lingered over your name, the delicate assembly of vowels a voice inside my head. You were sleeping when I arrived. I stood by your bed and watched the sheets rise gently. I knew what slant of light would make you turn over. It was then I felt the highways slide out of my hands. I remembered the old men in the west side café, dealing dominoes like magical charms. It was then I knew, like a woman looking backward, I could not leave you, or find anyone I loved more - Naomi Shihab Nye
Ode 314 Those who don’t feel this Love pulling them like a river, those who don’t drink dawn like a cup of spring water or take in sunset like supper, those who don’t want to change, let them sleep. This Love is beyond the study of theology, that old trickery and hypocrisy. I you want to improve your mind that way, sleep on. I’ve given up on my brain. I’ve torn the cloth to shreds and thrown it away. If you’re not completely naked, wrap your beautiful robe of words around you, and sleep. ~ Rumi
The Truelove There is a faith in loving fiercely the one who is rightfully yours, especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you never believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning hand held out to you this way. I am thinking of faith now and the testaments of loneliness and what we feel we are worthy of in this world. Years ago in the Hebrides I remember an old man who walked every morning on the grey stones to the shore of the baying seals, who would press his hat to his chest in the blustering salt wind and say his prayer to the turbulent Jesus hidden in the water, and I think of the story of the storm and everyone waking and seeing the distant yet familiar figure far across the water calling to them, and how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking, and that calling, and that moment we have to say yes, except it will not come so grandly, so Biblically, but more subtly and intimately in the face of the one you know you have to love, so that when we finally step out of the boat toward them, we find everything holds us, and confirms our courage, and if you wanted to drown you could, but you don’t because finally after all the struggle and all the years, you don’t want to any more, you’ve simply had enough of drowning and you want to live and you want to love and you will walk across any territory and any darkness, however fluid and however dangerous, to take the one hand you know belongs in yours. - David Whyte
Flirtation After all, there’s no need to say anything at first. An orange, peeled and quartered, flares like a tulip on a wedgewood plate Anything can happen. Outside the sun has rolled up her rugs and night strewn salt across the sky. My heart is humming a tune I haven’t heard in years! Quiet’s cool flesh— let’s sniff and eat it. There are ways to make of the moment a topiary so the pleasure’s in walking through. - Rita Dove
