Love Is A Poem Without A Title

I wrote this poem in memory of friends I’ve lost along the way. Lots of sad memories on this visit back home.

Love is a poem without a title.
It does not divide into sections.
We follow the convention to refer
To the first line when discussing it,
But it doesn’t really have a first line.

I want to keep you on my prayer stand,
Beside a copy of Moby Dick.
I pick it up and read it before I pray.
Because that is the best preparation
For prayer I can imagine.

We have always enjoyed
The consequence of words.
And cannot live with
And cannot die without.

I want to meet you there alone
And instead feel the intensity of
Saying nothing this time.

Just to count up every
Glance and gesture
For later memories.

To feel the surface of things
Until the true self is revealed.

Not breathing to live with
Or breathing to live without
But just to exist somewhere
Between us,
Both father from and closer to
Our painful differences.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

Maybe with some people, too much is said...or there is too much we figure out doesn't need to be said.
There is something to be said about comfortable silences.
j.

[John F]

I think we sometimes forgot to mark that the shared space between isn’t in words but in the humanity. I am trying to remember that poetry is the gateway to this and not the words themselves.