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Retired from Love Poems
by Maureen GlaudeI confess writing poems
of romantic love (as such)
is a practise going extinct
for this poet
perhaps the Beatles song has a point
does the world really need any more?
At least from one
who finds the subject baffling
and often beyond the power of pen and print
(let alone heart and mind)
to comprehend, capture, explain,
mourn, or commemorate?
I suppose if the experience couches its way
into a general treatise on life,
the love of nature, people in general,
passion for human existence, spirituality,
sexuality, so be it
but on its own terms, the old dagger-in-the-heart
or whispered sweet nothings theme
resides for me in some secret, locked-up
place in the trunk
where the earlier piles of efforts
literary and experiental
on the subject rest
No fear, I've not gone cold or cynical
nor retired from love
but Ive come by now
to appreciate how little predictability
understanding and grasp I have found of
romantic love
so why would I have the audacity to address
it like a sage?
And why would I be willing to let it
seduce me into taking my verse
on the mystery tour again?
It's always seemed a fragile subject
like a wild animal, susceptible to damage and change
if touched by human hand
a degree of beauty
or sense of safety easily compromised
or like a dream that you lose the memory of
if you try too hard to decipher it.
Besides, Im not sure where Id go
with an intimate love theme now
where it might take me, or the reader
or even where Ive ever been.
Placing my own love stories on the public path
might present a maze of nettles
to wanderers there
though admittedly thered be daisies
(a few well-stripped)
and the trek turns so uphill-just when
its gone downhill and then
back down again
after hanging at a cliff edge
without ever reaching the proverbial
Tree of Knowledge or even
the aspired calm of the Lote Tree.
Instead I leave such things
to all those other scribes who still like
to write their love poems
enough to say
you could categorize this
as my last poem about romantic love
but please don't hold me to it. 07/04/2005 Posted on 07/04/2005
Copyright © 2024 Maureen Glaude
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by Glenn Currier on 07/04/05 at 10:25 PM This captures a lot of my own sentiment: "like a wild animal, susceptible to damage and change /if touched by human hand" It IS such a slippery word, so prosaic nowadays. I love my car, my cigar, my allegator shoes, my job.... on and on until the word loses meaning. I really identify with you on this one. To the extent that I wonder if anyone can understand my own attempts to put on that public path the sepia strands of my heart. Thanks, this is wonderful, Maureen.
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| Posted by Chris Sorrenti on 07/04/05 at 11:04 PM You're preaching to the choir. :o) |
| Posted by Ashok Sharda on 07/07/05 at 02:25 PM 'And why would I be willing to let it
seduce me into taking my verse
on the mystery tour again?
It's always seemed a fragile subject
like a wild animal, susceptible to damage and change
if touched by human hand
a degree of beauty
or sense of safety easily compromised'.... the beauty of any sensing is always compromised when we tend to express the inexpressible. Words are not our experience. The language of known can only verbalize commonly expressed experience in a round about way and not what we SENSE in those love smeared moments.
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| Posted by Quentin S Clingerman on 07/08/05 at 11:47 AM Hmmmm Philosophical and stoic. Yet, romantic love is so unpredictable. Shows up in the strangest places and under the strangest circumstances I think. You wisely give a caveat! |
| Posted by Michelle Angelini on 07/09/05 at 10:31 AM Gosh, Mo, there's so much in this poem. I could dissect it piece by piece, but the others have said pretty much what I wanted to. One thing, with love's unpredictability, the ending is quite fitting.
~Chelle~ |
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