Grab a cuppa and a comfy seat, and let’s chat a while! It’s time for Coffee and Conversation!
When I was six, my family was driving on a highway late at night. Streaks of headlights and taillights painted the dark. For the first time, I realized that each car held people living lives as important to them as mine was to me.
I wanted to know what those lives were, and to share my own..
Do you celebrate Valentine’s Day?
My Accomplice and I have pretty much stopped buying material gifts on the days the calendar marks as “special”. Over the last year or two, we’ve spent more time, year-round, honoring one another in smaller, more consistent ways. Things like respecting one another’s need for quiet or personal time or connection.
Put a Little Love in Yours!
Today, at Love Is In Da Blog , Bee prompted us to write a tribute, perhaps a haiku or something short, to our significant other.
This poem isn’t particularly short, but it’s nonetheless an honest, autobiographical tribute to my Accomplice, and to the nearly eighteen years we’ve been together. I wrote it last October, for OctPoWriMo – but it’s perfect for today, so here it is again – as my first #LoIsInDaBl poem post.
Lava Lake, Gallatin National Forest, Montana. The trail kept going up the mountain, but this is where we camped.
“It Levels Off Up Ahead”
“It levels off up ahead,” you said,
As we hiked toward Lava Lake
Love can be like that trail,
Winding up and up
Strenuous, taxing,
Fraught with dangers
Like the bears
In the Montana wilds
The obstacles and the
Rough places of life.
**
Bliss is the thing we expect, maybe
When we give ourselves over to love
What we want is the glory
Consuming everything but
Each other
Those long wild nights
When it’s lovemaking
And talking
And touching
And more touching
More talking
And a lot more
Making love.
**
Blinded by emotion
By hope and raw desire
Hunger and need
And the dreams
That wrap us round
Tighter and tighter
Cocooning us in
A webbing of unity
With no room left
For the world beyond
Or the future
Or even
Reality.
**
Honeymoon fights
As reality solidifies
I want to go to the
Aquarium – you don’t
We fight, I cry, you win
Later, in Kingman AZ
Reality a vise, a leghold trap
teeth at my throat
I left the car, walked out
Nighttime desert
Scorches with truth
Hot and relentless
In every heated breath
“I can’t believe
I married you!”
Words sharper than
Agave thorns.
**
Euphoria is a bubble
A cloud a wave
Something that ebbs
And rises anew
Like switchbacks, and
the steep broken path
Up the side of a
Mountain
Leading to the
Treasure of a
Hidden blue lake
A place to rest and renew
But the path winds up, still
It never did level off up ahead
Not on that trip anyway
And we chose not to climb
Higher that day, but to
Find peace with our descent
And delve the lower places
Within and between us.
**
Annoyed too often and for too long
A seething lava pit beneath
The surface of our love
And our shared lives
Boiling over like a geyser
Rumbling and rending
Poisoning the waters
Upheaval at the roots
Like a fallen sequoia
Or Sedona’s red rocks
The schisms and rifts
Whenever we didn’t
Agree.
**
Bewildered by new identity
Mommy and Daddy – who, us?
To suddenly be the ones
Responsible for his life
His health his laughter
And far too many early tears
Frustrations, rages, his and ours
The trips and stumbles
along the path
Many unseen dangers
Lurking like Montana bears
Hidden by glacial boulders
Shadows in the wild places
In the world, in ourselves
Jagged edges that threaten
This fragile being, our son
Our love blended and grew
Glowing in baby blue eyes
Eyes fixed on us.
**
Grief grabs us, squeezes, clenches
You hold our secondborn so gently
As the monitors slow, ssllooww
Stop.
You hold him for another hour
Squeezing and clenching
Shock of sorrow
Piercing reality
This isn’t a level place
This is trauma, soul deep
Black clouds, gaping void
Empty clothes, empty crib
Empty arms, empty womb
We cling together and
Fill what we can.
**
Joy isn’t always held in
Those leveling off spots
It’s like the sudden grin
Our daughter’s dancing eyes
Child born from tragedy
Force of nature
Like that climbing path
So long ago
Joy is a flower
Fragile
Ephemeral…
And not really the point
Of this hike, this life
Lived together
It’s the rainbow
The squeals of laughter
The moments in firelight
In desert mountains
In caves and scuba gear
Touch and taste of you
Quickening my heart
Binding me tighter with
Spidersilk webbing
Tensile strength and
Freedom…
**
It’s always been
About the
Journey.
What’s your love story? Have you ever set it to music or poetry? Captured it in images? It’s snowy outside, but snug and cozy in here. Won’t you have another cuppa, and share with us?
The path ahead still isn’t level…but so worth it!
You can find more Week 2 posts here (add link when available) – and, if you’d like to get more of that lovin’ feelin’, join in with your own take! =D
