Love is never simple

In my eighty years I have found that love is never frozen in some ideal shape, no matter how much some people would like to think it can be. Like marriage, it has to be dynamic and flexible, or it will break. It’s a heaving sea, sometimes calm but with a deceptive swell, sometimes stormy, and sometimes a rogue wave comes to swamp our craft.

Love is never simple

Love is never a simple matter of yes or no, do or don’t,
there’s no black or white, no one thing or the other,
no matter how much a victim may demand assurance.
Love is dynamic, ever-changing, growing, sparking,
swerving, swelling, circling, shrinking, creaking, barking!
Chaos is queen in here, throwing anything in the mix
from butterfly wings to full-fledged hurricanes.
If all seems tranquil and you are content that it will last
unchanging through your life, you’re not unlike
a blindfold child walking a cliff edge, oblivious to the drop.
To negotiate this storm and its uncertainties
be like the sailor who knows to loose the sheet when gusts
threaten to overturn his craft, who steers athwart the waves
and watches when the wave approaching from astern
threatens to break and swamp his craft.
And while the sails are drawing well, and by his compass
he is near enough to his desired course, he’s glad,
for nothing’s perfect and to stay afloat and reach
the harbour is his only aim, and quite enough!

© MM 27.3.2010