{"id":1189,"date":"2022-11-16T19:00:22","date_gmt":"2022-11-17T00:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pensivejournal.com\/?p=1189"},"modified":"2022-11-15T22:53:32","modified_gmt":"2022-11-16T03:53:32","slug":"aphorisms-on-the-origins-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pensivejournal.com\/poetry\/aphorisms-on-the-origins-of-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Aphorisms on the Origins of Love"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 For the stranded refugees <\/span><\/em>
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 of Nogales, Sonora<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n
Turn where we may, windows of souls
glow from the dawn of longing.<\/span><\/div>\n
We made homes on a plain of river oxbows,
seat of sorcery for slow childhoods,<\/span><\/div>\n
shadows of mountain, nooks of cliff,
table-land strewn with every geology,<\/span><\/div>\n
where swans\u2019 wings defy gravity in rampant play
over marsh dusted with down, cradled in clay.<\/span><\/div>\n
In years of daylong
mornings, newborn light
in a striking of
blue glass on wooden ledges,
rising hoodoo-spindles
born of caressing wind,
ages of lesser heartache
passed like our chosen pain.<\/span><\/div>\n
Horizons span the mind\u2019s canvas,
we rose to stake this claim.144<\/span>
Each child knows we loved<\/span>
in every lifetime,<\/span>
perhaps the only way <\/span>
love could crack a pupa <\/span>
of sullen instinct \u2014<\/span>
fully, in a single beam,<\/span>
whomsoever the other <\/span>
may have been<\/span>
\u2014 brows, mouth, glance,<\/span>
immortal words<\/span>
or chance anecdote,<\/span>
through lost epochs, <\/span>
or winged moments.<\/span><\/div>\n
Off we set on journeys, before slow-walkers noticed.<\/span>
Quick or endless, none can promise.<\/span><\/div>\n
Who among us could get far alone?<\/span>
What has our species, single-minded, yet initiated?<\/span><\/div>\n
Can we stride upright, an unseen path, at unique points in time? <\/span>
Have we translated passions into a true design?<\/span><\/div>\n
Yet on every tilth, a way runs out before us<\/span>
as mesas, eye-dry, proffer laden riches.<\/span><\/div>\n
This is the riddle<\/span>
wrapped in song<\/span>
we learned<\/span>
not to try <\/span>
too hard to solve. <\/span>
For don\u2019t we all,<\/span>
one day pause,<\/span>
parched and lonesome,<\/span>
footsore, loathsome,<\/span>
at a dusty crossroads,<\/span>
a rocky ford, <\/span>
or by the ruin<\/span>
of some mythic church?<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
are anywhere recorded,<\/span>
that book must affirm<\/span>
in plainest statement<\/span>
that we spawned <\/span>
what bears the name <\/span>
of love<\/span>
in spite of onslaught,<\/span>
drought and twister, <\/span>
migration and disaster,<\/span>
in spite of mob rule <\/span>
that scatters every sect,<\/span>
shatters every tool,<\/span>
spreads the epidemic <\/span>
of fresh obsession,<\/span>
fever, travesty,<\/span>
and puts the lie<\/span>
to kinder history.<\/span><\/div>\n
So we loved us, <\/span>
whensoever, <\/span>
as at this moment<\/span>
water fills its many forms<\/span>
and seeks its every level.<\/span><\/div>\n
How can it be more or less than what is fated,<\/span>
matter or energy, within our knowing, never once negated?<\/span><\/div>\n
If two or more may be annealed as one,<\/span>
what miracles await, yet to be done?<\/span><\/div>\n
Across these earthly plains and shining spaces, <\/span>
lush freshets and ebbing tides,<\/span><\/div>\n
wise persons seek it still:<\/span>
our deity of many faces.<\/span><\/div>\n