The Gift of an Exquisite Love – the Fifth Lineage Poem, on Valentines day no less! We were eighteen years old, in our freshman year of college in a small town in Michigan. I’d borrowed the money from my girlfriend (a long story) to take her out to an old-school, no-alcohol coffee house called “the Troubador” in Kalamazoo Michigan.

The room was full of cigarette smoke, and we were with three other couples, all there to hear a band who’s name I’ve long forgotten. Between sets, we all ordered coffees and the talk was fast and loud. She was seated directly across the large round table from me. Thinking of nothing much at all, I happened to look up and straight into her impossibly large green eyes.

And I was done for. I fell in love in that instant, and have never stopped loving her.

The Gift of an Exquisite Love

A love that I’ve never relinquished. A love that has sustained me now for over forty years.

These poems were written a very long time ago

Each one came as a completed poem

Each was a gift

The Gift of an Exquisite Love

I felt myself break


I felt myself break

and drift back
and back, and down

to settle here
forever

on the deep green floor
of your eyes

And the second, once that gifted love had begun to breathe.

the soft, soft sleep of dawn


I awoke this morning
to the brush your lash
on my neck

like a light
on the still darkened stage
of our bodies held tight 

and heavy and warm
in the soft, soft sleep
of dawn

Link to the first Lineage Poem (the ground):https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/01/09/a-joyful-noise-root-music-of-the-heartland/

Link to the second Lineage Poem (father dying):https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/01/16/on-the-way-to-heaven-2nd-lineage-poem-over-ohio/

Link to the third Lineage Poem (burying my father): https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/01/24/a-father-returns-home-welcomed-by-the-land/

Link to the fourth Lineage Poem (missing a mother):https://oldbonesnewsnow.com/2022/02/01/a-mothers-love-a-sons-regrets-fourth-of-the-lineage-poems/

And a closing link to the incredible Pablo Neruda, Love Sonnet XI:https://hellopoetry.com/poem/9927/love-sonnet-xi/