Thursday, September 5, 2013

Love Isn't - My Poetry for the Bride and Groom

I recently had the great honor to write a little poetry for my brother in law and his new wife.  I read the following writing at their reception.  I hop you like it as much as I enjoyed writing and reading it.

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Love Isn't

Love isn't seeing a girl for the first time, across a clearing, struggling to set up her tent, and walking over to help. 
Love isn't sitting in the rain for hours, trying to learn everything about this girl through deep conversation. 
Love isn't watching her eyes and lips move, never being able to get enough of the way her nose jiggles up and down when she talks. 
Love isn't realizing that this is the first girl you've ever been able to talk to without your cheeks turning twelve shades of red. 
Love isn't wrapping your arms around the woman you want to spend the rest of your life with, drinking in the scent of her unique perfume, your ears filling with the sound of your beating hearts. 
Love isn't finding every waking (and sleeping) moment to see her smiling face, learning everything there is to learn, giving everything there is to give. 
Love isn't driving for hours, in the middle of the night, seeking the darkest corners of the moonlit world, to get out and walk in the tall fields of corn, or the mosquito infested woods, surrounding each other with your arms as you went, trying as hard as you could, to halve the distance between you and her. 
Love isn't standing up by her head, whispering in her ear, as she grits her teeth in agony, over bringing a new life into this world. 
Love isn't casting off unnecessary impediments to living a life free of shackling ideology, strolling swiftly and deliberately into the unknown. 
Love isn't standing in the living room while children perfect their wall art with pencil, crayon, marker, hammer and nails, anything that etched, talking about new paint colors, new carpet and trim, to be installed just when the grandkids begin the art all over again. 
Love isn't washing mountains of dishes, thousands of loads of laundry, hundreds of toilets, changing hundreds of thousands of diapers, even the ones where the diaper seemed to be the only object on the child unsoiled. 
Love isn't engaging in an all-out war or argument for days on end, working out bits and pieces of the discussion at the edges, slowly moving to the core issues, which just happen to magically disappear the second you’re about to grasp them, leaving you staring into each other’s eyes, hearing nothing but the soft breath escaping her lips. 
Love isn't walking into a messy house and yelling at the top of your lungs at the scurrying children, willing them to pretend to placate you by picking up a toy just long enough for you to be satisfied, then dropping it when your head is turned, and then hearing your bride say, “Shut up and kiss me.” 
Love isn't pulling her close when the stresses of life and new fields of discovery cause her to break down in tears, resting her head on your chest for hours, talking about the realities of Princess Bride and the evils of the importation of dandelions. 
No, love isn't any of these things – for you. 
For you, I look forward to your life, defining what love really is, moment by moment, year after year. 

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