Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

 Pablo Neruda
 (Thank you to my facebook friend Norvie for reminding me of Neruda.)


Miles and miles traveled since I last posted.  By car, by plane, by foot, down highways, back roads, vineyards and suburbs, rolling golden hills and waving fields of corn. The Atlantic, the Alleghany mountains, the Susquehanna, Chenango, Lake Erie, the Pacific shore, the mighty virgin redwoods, good hearted people all along the way.  Affluence, poverty, and so many in the strange middleland.  Northern California by way of San Francisco..plane travel...still cannot quite feel at home with being in the air in a compressed air machine flying how many miles per hour?  38,000 feet above the earth?  Can you?
The idea that we can propel ourselves through space in this fashion..metal boxes hurtling us compelling us to move ever faster, travel ever further, yet we continue to war, we continue to anger, some are starving while overweight in America takes the vanilla wafers from the steward without even thinking, takes the coke in the plastic cup while soaring like a steel bird leaving trails of jet fuel to be absorbed into mammals milk, all in the name of progress, globalization, so we don't have to know anymore, the exact number of hours it takes for a human or animal to walk 3500 miles across the land. We have forgotten our roots, but we try to remember through the arts, through our gardens, through our human connection when we share a loss or joy, and we need an embrace, a holding.