Mezin,

In the village of
Mezin, rose briar
grows gnarly and
thick. Tall, crimson
hollyhocks arise
in disorderly array.

Our garden grows
wild again. Hours

Of youth in eternal
pause. Two magpies
quarrel overhead
not you and I.

Tangles
of wild flower
fragrant poems.
New lovers
burst riotous color
into Spring.

Hidden, a garden
cottage where
the roof cascades.
A gentle rosewood
bed creaks and stirs
remembers centuries,

Of rose petaled
hours, unblemished
first love. Such a
wildflower garden
only reverie can
capture.

Ode to Aphrodite

Deathless Aphrodite throned in flowers,

Daughter of Zeus, O terrible enchantress,

With this sorrow, with this anguish, break my spirit,

Lady, no longer!

Hear anew the voice! O hear and listen!

Come as in that island dawn thou camest,

Billowing in thy yoked cart to Sappho

Forth from thy father’s

Golden house in pity!... I remember

Fleet and fair thy sparrows drew thee, beating

Fast their wings above the dusky harvests,

Down the pale heavens,

Lighting anon!  And thou, O blest and brightest,

Smiling with immortal eyelids, asked me:

“Maiden, what betideth thee?  Or wherefore

Callest upon me?

“What is here the longing more than other,

Here in this mad heart?  And who the lovely

One beloved thou would not lure to loving?

Sappho, who wrongs thee?

How so unwilling..

Come again to me!  O now!  Release me!

End the great pang!  And all my heart desireth

Now of fulfillment, fulfill!  O Aphrodite,

Fight by my shoulder!

Images of Love by Diane Dehler

Images of Love



I

I touch you staring into a
fire’s crackling flame. We are

Only shadows on the wall
for there is no time.


II

The evening is short;
surrounds us draws us apart,
reunites us.

We are the only music
that is real.



III


When you came to me
I knew at once Adam. You
were forbidden fruit.

Soft are your firm hands
on me. We have always
known each other.



IV

My fear of you binds me to the
moving postures of this bed.
Is this fear love?


VI


You leap from the music
of, Swan Lake, a prince but

Tonight I am Clytemnestra,
wearing sackcloth and ash. We
do not touch.


VII

We make love by a
seashore. I marvel at your sun

Drenched hair and throw my lace
dress carelessly aside.


VIII

Sand wedges batik designs on
our footsteps. A collector of

Seaweed and tides finds my
dress covered with wet sand &

Takes it home. You love
me without it.



IX

Eroticism is a mirage,
touched it disappears.

Who told you, you could
touch my thigh?





X


When the sailor’s red sun
sinks low in the sky.

In that second we will know
all desire.


Published reviously, From the Four-Chambered Heart: In Tribute to Anais Nin, Sybaritic Press, June 2013.

My Love, Therese Plantier

My love

Because I felt the first smell of summer
I thought I'd live a thousand years
with you
but I was late there have been
to train your eyes
then down against the road
among the burdock and nettles purple
beat the bushes drumming
above with palms wool
cardée by brambles
future undertook to undeceive me
vira blue-silence
while the pods of broom to sweep
crashed into dry on the sky
bent to the left in the smell of your fingers.


Therese Plantier

more on Therese Plantier

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, said Princess Haiku...a poet of love

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,
Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light
Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:
And love is fire. And when I say at need
I love thee . . . mark! . . . I love thee—in thy sight
I stand transfigured, glorified aright,
With conscience of the new rays that proceed
Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low
In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures
Who love God, God accepts while loving so.
And what I feel, across the inferior features
Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show
How that great work of Love enhances Nature's.

she slept within the petals, said Princess Haiku

She slept within the petals
of a fragrance that held her
as close as eternity and as
gentle as a lover

Diane Dehler @2012

Marissa Nadler- Annabelle Lee

a poem by Rafael Alberti, said Princess Haiku

HOMECOMING OF LOVE ON THE SANDS

photo

This morning, my love, we are twenty years old.
Let us go, very slowly, braiding together
Our barefoot shadows, on paths through orchards
That face the blue of the sea with all their greenness.
You ar almost an apparition,
The same one which came once in the lightless evening
Between two lights,
When the young citizen, pensive and idle,
Loitered along his homeward road.
You are still the one seeking, beside me,
The steep secret of the dunes,
The hidden slope of sand, the occult
Reeds which hold
Their curtains before the sea eyes of the wind.
You are there. I am there beside you. I control
The vast temperature of the happy waves,
The heart of the sea, blindly rising,
And dying in tatters of foam and sweet salt.
The collapsing castles rear their battelments,
The seaweeds offer us their crowns, the sails
Tense in flight, sing over the towers.

This morning, my love, we are twenty years old.
Rafael Alberti

I found this pocket book with Spanish poems in it that took my breath away. I cannot imagine a world without love poetry or poets.

From "Thirty Spanish Poems of Love and Exile, edited by Kenneth Rexroth