A Temporary State of Love [poem]
If you’re hoping that I’ll sort you out and mend your life
and take away your strife and bucketful of baggage
like it’s broken up and chockly full of empty holes
you’re waiting for a man like me to fill (my ancient role),
I’ll be your therapist or bosom friend but not your lover.
If you want me to complete you in your yearning soul,
as if you cannot yet become your lovely self unaided
(for until you have, you cannot truly fully love a man),
I will befriend you and encourage you in any way I can
to find that self (for you in all your loneness to discover).
But if you long to walk with me in all our naked dreams as
equals on a wildsome way with hurricanes and gentle
breezes, desert springs with torrid rains, torrents flowing
chasmly, greeting everything which comes our way with
groanly gasps (adventure’s frisson) — that’s another matter.
For then — too busy giving to indulge in selfish take —
we will not use or bruise a lover but will build each other
into one house here in two (a temporary state of love
when viewed with outward sight), with doors between
and windows too allowing in the light, while knowing
that the house will one day fall, no longer needed for
a love which was already then complete and clean —
a spirit-powered scene as flesh recedes, decays and
beauty then is seen and found in deeper other ways.
.
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© Alan Morrison, 2016
The Naked Troubadour 