Love is

I'm home now. I arrived late Saturday night and spent all day Sunday in bed. I am still suffering from the cold I came down with as soon as I hit Youngstown. I'm not feeling well and feel I have nothing of interest to say, but saved something from the Writer's Almanac last week to share with you.

The Nearness That Is All

Love's what Shakespeare never
said by saying, "You have
bereft me of all words, lady."

Love is the man who siphoned
phlegm from his ill wife's throat
three times a day for seven
years.

Love's what the Arabs
mean when they bless those
with children: "May God keep them
for you."

Or why a mother
whispers to her suckling, "May you
bury me."

Love's how the ten-year
widow speaks of her buried
husband in the present tense.

Love lets the man with one leg
and seven children envy no man
living and none dead.

Love
leaves no one alone but, oh,
lonely, lonelier, loneliest
at midnight in another country.

Love is jealousy's mother
and father.

Love's how death
creates a different nearness
but kills nothing.

Love
makes lovers rise from each
loving wanting more.

Love
says impossibility's possible
always.

Love saddens glad
days for no bad reason.

Love gladdens sad days
for no good reason.

Love
mocks equivalence.

Love is.

"The Nearness That Is All" by Samuel Hazo, from A Flight to Elsewhere. © Autumn House Press, 2005.