Sharon Olds writes about Storge . . .
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by: Sharon Olds
as you lie on the beach, memorizing you
against the time when you will not be with me:
your empurpled lips, swollen in the sun
and smooth as the inner lips of a shell;
your biscuit-gold skin, glazed and
faintly pitted, like the surface of a biscuit;
the serious knotted twine of your hair.
I have loved you instead of anyone else,
loved you as a way of loving no one else,
every separate grain of your body
building the god, as you were built within me,
a sealed world. What if from your lips
I had learned the love of other lips,
from your starred, gummed lashes the love of
other lashes, from your shut, quivering
eyes the love of other eyes,
from your body the bodies,
from your life the lives?
Today I see it is there to be learned from you:
to love what I do not own.
I love the conclusion Olds reaches in this poem about her daughter--the necessity for parents to love their kids, knowing full well those kids will eventually leave to search for their own versions of love. Love can't really be owned.
I know this love post is early--Valentine's Day is tomorrow. But there's no such thing as too much love, is there? Plus, I didn't want to write another post tonight about Agent Orange and his partner, Apartheid. (By the way, there are terms for the love of the Felon in Chief: racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, homophobia. If you want a blanket term that covers all the bases, just use stupidity.)
I want to talk about my puppy tonight, who truly is the poster child for agape. It doesn't matter to her whether I've taken her for a walk, ignored her, or spent two hours scratching her ears and belly. She will always crawl into my lap and lick my face until I start laughing. In short, she loves unconditionally.
We should all experience that kind of devotion every day. Love that doesn't expect anything in return but more love. I'm a pretty blessed person, because I have a lot of agape in my life--from my wife, daughter, son. And puppy. Of course, as the old saying goes, the price of great love is great sorrow. If you love someone or something deeply, you will eventually experience the grief of losing that someone of something. That's how it works.
Saint Marty wrote a poem about puppy love for tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:
Choose a word and its antonym then write a poem that contrasts the two extremes. Consult a dictionary or thesaurus to find all the synonyms for your opposite words, or simply rely on memory to construct your lists of opposites. Pairing possibilities:
bright/dim
light/heavy
large/small
extrovert/introvert
Mercy Is a Wound
by: Martin Achatz
Mercy is a wound sometimes, the way
you take your old dog to the vet when
she loses sight, control of her
bowels and bladder, when she looks
at you with marbled eyes, sniffs
your palm because she can't rise
from her pillow, presses her
hot tongue to your skin to make
sure you are her person, the one
who fills her water dish, scratches
her ears, invokes her name in morning
light, like she's answered prayer.
Let's say her name is Mercy,
and let's also say she knows
she's so close to darkness
she can smell its clay in the air.
Pick Mercy up, carry her
to the car, wrap her in a blanket
if she shivers. When you're
in the exam room with her, say
her name over and over:
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.
And when the needle makes her
yelp, say her name again, quietly,
your lips right by her ear until
her eyes close, breathing slows,
paws cease twitching. Tell her
she has been mercy in your life,
a Band-Aid or cool breeze
on difficult days. When you bring
her home, put her in the ground
under her favorite pine. Visit her
as much as you can until winter
comes with its cold, wounding
blanket.
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