For Valentine's Day

I thought I'd share poems of love today - perhaps even throw one of my own in, who knows?


This first one is a WITS entry by Damien, 6th grade, and was published February 5th.

I love you with a love that isn't love
Which is a different love from the depth of love that is from me
The most loving soul ever in the time of history.

I love you like the sun loves to warm the plants.
I love you so much I would go to the breadth of the universe.

When you walk your body moves to the music of love.
In my soul I love you so that I write until I have no more hands.


Here are a couple that I wrote, many years ago, before my third marriage. You can see what a romantic fool and how in love with love I was!

Jumper Cable

When all else seems to fail,
When life wags its grim tale

Of woe & sadness, it seems to me
My heart jumps just looking at thee!


This, Too, Shall Pass

The magic aura of the first pangs of love
Sends us soaring far beyond the clouds above.

You say you're giddy, I say I'm drunk.
Between the two of us, we've sunk

Far below our mutual points of resistance.
(May we never wish to keep our distance!)

To think, "This, too, shall pass," only disturbs the illusion
And seems to add to the general confusion

Going on in our minds while we're living this phase
Of discovery, utter delight, and not enough time in our days.


Next, - not really a poem, but I'd like to include it - taken from The Jerusalem Bible, is one with which we are all probably familiar. Here is 1st Corinthians, Chapter 13.

If I have all the eloquence of men or of angels, but speak without love, I am simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing. If I have the gift of prophecy, understanding all the mysteries there are, and knowing everything, and if I have faith in all its fulness, to move mountains, but without love, then I am nothing at all. If I give away all that I possess, piece by piece, and if I even let them take my body to burn it, but am without love, it will do me no good whatever.

Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offense, and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people's sins but delights in the truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.

Love does not come to an end. But if there are gifts of prophecy, the time will come when they must fail; or the gift of languages, it will not continue for ever; and knowledge -- for this, too, the time will come when it must fail. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophesying is imperfect; but once perfection comes, all imperfect things will disappear. When I was a child, I used to talk like a child, and think like a child, and argue like a child, but now I am a man, all childish ways are put behind me. Now we are seeing a dim reflection in a mirror; but then we shall be seeing face to face. The knowledge that I have now is imperfect; but then I shall know as fully as I am known.

In short, there are three things that last: faith, hope and love; and the greatest of these is love.