Look: A Poem About Missing And Finding Love

Look.

Look around you

at the people, so driven,

by a force

relentless as gravity

inescapable as day and night, life and death.

The power that winds us and grinds us,

makes us crazy is the hunger for love,

the search for love,  the absence of love,

the loss of love.

Its effects are everywhere,

visible, invisible,

pervasive;

in this landscape of loss

and loneliness

the search grips everyone

obsessive as a drug hunger

so intrusive and demanding

that we are not even aware

as it seeps into the air we breathe,

the molecules of our daily existence

have sponged it up

so that it becomes like the music

from the next apartment

or from a passing car,

a beat felt,

vibrating up through the floor, humming

in the walls, everywhere.

I will wear clothes that get me love…

I will scent myself

to find love…

I will paint my face

to attract love…

I will sculpt my body

to perfect love….

I will groom my hair

to waft love…

I will signal my hunger

without knowing my desperation…

I will scream my loneliness

in silent longing glances

across parties,

in stores,

twist my neck,

twist my soul

for its wanting……

want my soul

without knowing

that it is love

without a search

without a need

without a struggle.

It took me but half a life

to meet the person

in whom love made a home for me.

I twisted and howled so loud

I did not see her when she first knocked at my door.

Her face was not familiar

her smell was strange

her voice was odd

I kept looking

like so many fools before me

love did not make the noise

of the neighbor’s apartment

the thump of the passing car

love was unexpected

because I was drawing children’s pictures

in a book with a silly title:

True Love For Soul Mates in Eternity.

That was the wrong book.

My love gently took the book from my hand;

here, she whispered, look around you

this is what love really is:

only when you’ve exhausted your immaturity

are you ready

to care for someone

as deeply as I now care

for you.

Look around you

at the heartsick lonely ones

who sniff greedily but disdainfully

for a few moments

at the possibility of love

and then move on,

hoping somehow love will find them

when they have missed its delicate sign

a thousand times, so busy with the pursuit

that they have failed the simple lessons

of caring.

Now I have, at last, exhausted my immaturity:

now your voice is familiar,

your face is beautiful

your music is here,

in the room with me,

not some distant fateful sound,

here, with me,

I hear you, I see you,

I smell you,

I love you more
all the time.