There is a Love Beside Love

There is a love beside love

It sits with me when you cannot

Teaching me about absence
About the very bottom of desire

Love comes with me on a walk
and we experience things together

For a moment I dissolve in the sun

and start to see Love’s teachings

wide open in all things,

That I will never be the song
I am singing to the clouds

That I am not a bird
as I peck for sustenance under the sky

I am not a laugh
as I see the sparkle of my joy in your eyes

That laugh that gives life for
at least a thousand years

I cannot be the river
or the wooden plank I sit on
high above its narrow passage

even as I understand the water’s downward flow
and shiver as the eagle soars low to its
rippling crests

Nor can I be the language
Stenciled onto craters
that have sent messages along the river

that sit beside me now

even as everything I cannot say

lays bare in words
awaiting discovery

I say to the love that sits beside me
I am not you, and love looks back

(I am love)

I say I am not life

(I am life)

The sun on the river shines bright
without my ever looking up

I don’t want to know anything else

I want my feet to kiss the river
down at the shore
as long as it will have me
as the day grows cold

and you will come back to me

It’s quiet, still

I want to thank the wooden planks I sit on

pray for the forest
and breathe love in

Love out

(I am love)

Love elephant and want to go steady?

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Author: Tammy T. Stone

Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: courtesy of the author