Infatuation is peacock tales,
fountains of rose petals,
always music underneath
like a movie crescendoing.
Love is cutting onions
for supper when you are
already tired. Love is patched
of hope and habit and desire,
a tend mended nightly.
Love is tough as a bone
you gnaw on, suck out
the marrow. Love is a bone
of which you make soup
and, surprise, it sustains you.
Infatuation is fun, a tango
in a grove of mirrors. Love
is just work, what you do
one day after the next
like bricks laid end to end
and finally infatuation
leaves you with a sticky
sweet residue in the bottom
of the glass, and love is all
you remember as you're dying.
[Marge Piercy, 'Love's Clay', from Colors Passing Through Us]
For years I chose the
instant, from good
guy to goat boy,
dreadlocked to crewcut.
Not one could bridal me...
...When my last love came,
he slid a palm across
mine eyes, lent me his
mouth (a bitten plum)
lay his head in the middle
of me, bent me to that.
Nights now,
my face rests on the
meadow of his chest--so
I'm a loose-petaled poppy
blown open, a girl again, for
the first time hearing the
earth's heartbeat.
[Mary Karr, 'Last Love', from Sinners Welcome]
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