(For those who read the Valentine’s Day Survival Guide–Pts. 1 and 2–and are planning a party, I’ll get back with you on games and menu ideas tomorrow.)
Today I’m turning my attention to the guys– sharing some of my favorite love poems for inspiration. If you’re a guy and don’t want to write a poem for your girl, give her one of these. You could put your poem in a card, cook dinner for her and place it on her plate, or slip it in a box of candy. Regardless of what most of us say, we love a sweet talker…especially when you mean it.
If your girl isn’t a Domestic Diva like Martha Stewart or Rachel Ray, but her wit, people skills, and passion for life won your heart…
Love Poem
by John Frederick Nims
My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing
Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.
Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers’ terror,
Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime
Yet leaping before apopleptic streetcars—
Misfit in any space. And never on time.
A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only
With words and people and love you move at ease;
In traffic of wit expertly maneuver
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.
Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gaily in love’s unbreakable heaven
Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.
Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses—
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break.
If your lady has opened you up in ways others couldn’t, give this to the one you’ve let in…
Somewhere I have Never Travelled
–e. e. cummings
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
And to those who dare…
Wild Nights—Wild Nights!
–Emily Dickinson
Wild Nights–Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile–the Winds–
To a Heart in port–
Done with the Compass–
Done with the Chart!
Rowing in Eden
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor–Tonight–
In Thee!
More later. Or again, you could try to write your own, remembering that according to Plato, “At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.”