love and the importance of poetry

...

Illustration by Warwick Goble to The Juniper Tree

From Anita, to Ashley: "Everyday, Wordpress highlights random blogs on their "Freshly Pressed" home page. A few days ago there was this one blog that has since been set to private and can't be accessed anymore. It's a blog that this guy set up to write his new wife (as of August) a year's worth of love poems...these poems are the ones I managed to "rescue" looking through cached pages."

About

www.ilovejanette.wordpress.com

365 Love Poems for My New Wife

At age 51 I met the woman I had been looking for since I was 15. On August 20, 2010, we became husband and wife. To celebrate, I intended to write her a poem a day for a year. However, we’re much too busy for that; so I will write a poem as often as I can, until I have come up with a year’s worth.  I make no promises about the quality of these poems. I write them very quickly, usually early in the morning, with little to no editing. If you are not my wife and are just here browsing, welcome! If you read something you like, feel free to copy, forward, link – whatever. Send them to the love of your life or, better yet, take inspiration and write something from your own heart.  If you don’t like them, thanks for coming by anyway.

If you ARE my wife, I hope you enjoy the site. I owe you everything.

From ilovejanette.wordpress.com, to his wife: Reflection

I picture myself standing
with guys
you know the kind: flannel shirts, pine
paneling, brown bottles held in front
like incense burners, offerings to
the sacred circle of

small talk

How’s the new wife they ask

as though I’d gotten a new

service or appliance

Great I answer

she still has that new wife smell

which all guys appreciate

And I know they’re generally
not worth it
but I got the extended warranty
with this one

Just like consumer reports recommends

What I would never tell

this circle of stale American beer

is that I lay next to you

and see our future

your face looks as it will
in twenty years
lined, and framed with gray hair

And what moves me is its utter

kindness

and I should have answered
that you are crazy
in the real, clinical sense
and that underlying that
is such a swelling of kindness
and compassion that it
can’t stay in the moment

the future
an eternity of possibilities
cannot contain it
my new wife I tell them
is so beautiful
I can see

her reflection

20 years in the future

From Ashley, to Anita: ...melting. I wonder how we could get invited? [to read]


From ilovejanette.wordpress.com, to his wife: Tao Says

Tao says
what makes a bowl useful

is the emptiness

I look at my bed
and think
Tao was never in love


From Ashley, to Anita: I want to be in love like that – full bowled and poem written.


From his wife:
by Janette

“who is coming for the after-party to help you clean up?”

asks my daughter

well, it’s you and me, babe

and what a glorious morning

to work side by side

a timeless, sheltered space

of togetherness and peace

well, it’s just me now,

you are napping,

a timeless, sheltered space

of slurping afternoon quietude

waiting for you to come back

to smell persimmons and chilis

From Anita, to Ashley (and from me to you): Wishing you full-bowled and poem-written love for 2011 and beyond.

From me to you, again:
...Does anyone know how to get invited to a secret wordpress blog? I wanna read more of these.