I came to a field
of flowers, seeking
nourishment, like a bee.
Those we love
never seem to know
how much we love—
The bee hovers over
the bee balm
the way I listen to
Einaudi, the way I
crave you.
The tree offers shade
with roots deep
as mother’s love.
The tree shades us,
her leaves, a manufacturing
plant for chlorophyll
but even they, powerless
without the deep work
of the roots.
The roots never
upstage the leaves,
nor even the branches.
More so,
like the unsung toil
of rootball,
or heart’s muscle,
so much of
the work of love
is hidden.
I walked seven miles alongside
a creek. The stream ran on and on
over rocks. A squirrel clambered
over roots, rustling pine needles.
Wild roses lifted pink goblets
to the sun, rain drops shimmering
on fragrant petals. Nature
spared no expense. Even
the short-tailed weasels
popped their heads playfully
from between rocks and ran
in circles. I did not solve
any problems for the world,
not even my own.
But the stream rustled:
“Here I am! Here I am!”
And the bird sang:
“Just be!”
First, they perch
on the front porch lamp.
Then, they smuggle mud and twigs
to lay masonry:
each plucked twig,
an expenditure of wings,
each mud bead,
stucco that trusses
sprig to sprig.
On tiled steps,
their cup spills,
the overflow of twigs that don’t fit,
the clay slip of pearls
that drop from beaks.
Watching the nest grow,
I don’t sweep discards.
Each dry blade of straw is long as a tailfeather.
Each clod of clay, an opaque pearl.
Swooping and diving through air,
the barn swallows catch insects
on the wing,
then scoop mud for the nest
without once touching down.
They are restless
creatures of feather and flight.
Day’s end, the barn swallows
perch again on lamp and nest,
and peer at me through clerestory windows.
Looking within and without,
in each other’s lives we see the detritus
of misfit straw and misfired clay,
that multiply like loaves and fishes.
Yet, in each scrappy act,
we see that love is restless
once the work’s begun,
that love meanders like a stream
until its task is done.
Love is like a river. When blocked by debris it forges a new route.
When it appears frozen on the surface, it moves still below the surface of the ice,
swift as fins on a fish.
Love is like a river. Love holds nothing back but gives all, rounds every corner.
Hoard love in a Hoover dam of thirst and you damage the entire ecosystem.
Yet the beaver tames the river just long enough to raise its young,
then lets the river unwind. Everything depends on the river.
Love is like a river. When you are hot, it soothes your ankles.
When you are lost, the river says: “Follow me.” All of life,
and even the earth itself, depends on the river. Because
the river loves all, it nurtures both trout and blue heron.
The river holds two opposing elements in its mind and resolves
any conflict by giving itself over and over, drop by drop
over to the hard heart of the rock, so that even bedrock,
worn down by the river, is softer
than the human heart.
The river folds itself between a rock
and the hard place
of your heart—that parched
watering hole—
where love crafts the riverbed.
Love is a river.
The axe is a mighty wedge. It can splice trees to fell logs
for a home.
The beaver’s tooth is a wedge. It shapes rivers.
The wedge in your heart, well,
let it be a ship wedge.
For the ship wedge bears a ship—heavy
as the grief of the Titanic—effortlessly,
and then releases it at one stroke,
and launches it,
and sends it off to sea.
I was profligate with my prayer,
Casting it into the water like food for ducks,
And it went unanswered.
Now I have it packaged neatly
Into the mustard seed
Small enough to slip
Through the eye of the needle.
It doesn’t matter how much you love,
Only that you love. You’ve seen how
Everything swells, the bud into bloom,
the thin lip of the new moon
into the radiance of a full moon,
spilling into the small pond.
For love strikes where it will,
if you are willing to receive it.
It doesn’t matter how much you love,
only that you are open to love, like a sail,
hoisted to the mast, ready for the windfall,
poised to ride the waves, precariously.
It doesn’t matter how much you love,
Only that you love, through thick and thin—
Even when you are hollowed out
as the drill hits the bone:
The shadow recalls the light. The thorn,
the fragrance of the rose. And when love
seems cold as cinders, remember how the iron prod
sparks the ember that still glows red.
For love strikes where it will,
if you are willing to receive it.
The words of a poem
should dovetail
like wood panels
of a finely crafted
cabinet.
The words of a poem
should glide,
effortlessly,
like a finely tuned
drawer.
In the box canyon
where a canyon wren has nested,
the canyon wren’s song
glides across the canyon
seamlessly
like water over rock:
each note
articulated and
composed
with a craftsman’s
precision.
Even so, it isn’t the melody
you remember.
It’s the way your heart
sang out.
All along the song was within you
but the bird gave it wing.
terimuso: Poetry by Tammy Iralu 