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The Brave Art of Love
To love, truly love,
is not the tremble of the lips in spring,
nor the wine-glassed vow beneath the moon’s soft ring;
it is not the poem etched in bloom and sigh,
but the dirt beneath the fingernails
when hearts break open and do not die.
It is to walk, barefoot, into the unknown
of another’s heart, not with lantern or map,
but with the trembling whisper: “I am here.”
And when storms rise like unspoken grief,
to plant your feet, not disappear.
Yes, it is easy to love when laughter spills
like light through clean windows;
when joy is abundant,
and the garden of the self needs no tilling.
But real love?
Real love, asks for hands in the dark,
asks for breath when breath is short,
asks for silence when words could wound,
asks for presence,
when every part of you longs to run.
It is the holy art of staying soft
when the air is stiff with tension,
of whispering calm when the storm is not yours,
but rages through the person you adore.
It is patience in the face of confusion,
kindness in the drought of understanding.
It is to sit beside another’s ache,
without fixing, without fleeing, simply being,
an open hand in a world of closed fists.
Love is not perfect.
It limps. It forgets.
It loses its way and learns again.
But oh, it is worth it.
Because beneath our bones,
behind our histories, we are just souls,
longing to be seen, to be known,
to be met in the stillness
and held as if we were light.
So love.
Love not for the reward,
but for the reverence.
Love bravely. Love deeply.
For this, dear heart,
is the divine labour of the living.
“It is the holy art of
“It is the holy art of staying soft
when the air is stiff with tension,
of whispering calm when the storm is not yours,
but rages through the person you adore.”
That stanza is a poem in itself and so flaring with the actual experience of love, not just the pretty concept, that it seems emblazoned, instinctively, on our true self, our inner being. That is greatness.
How deftly you cut through all the fluff, the cliches, the fantasies and tropes and got right to it. You gave an impeccable, heart-clutching example of love—the rock-solid, imperfect, ultimately perfect, kind—and expressed it with indisputable clarity.
Soon every ephemeral, counterfeit kind of affection seems like fading smoke next to a connection on the soul level you described when we are “met in the stillness/ and held as if we were light”.
Sublime truth.
Thank you for your wonderful
Thank you for your wonderful comment and expression of the quality of my poem. It is so deeply appreciated :)