Notes from the Field: On Love.

A few random thoughts on love.  

I love Valentine's Day, for reasons that can only be explained by counting backwards the months from my birthday.  People ask if knowing something like that is strange, and I say no as I'm consistently reminded of a nice line that I read in passing through: We loved here. I love that quote, and I love knowing there was love, then and there.

I've found love, fallen out of love, had unrequited loves and discovered new facets of love that I never knew existed.

There is some famous quote that says love is complicated. Really? I guess that after twenty-six short years of loving, I haven't quite yet figured out how. So for now, I'll leave you with my favorite love poem and some pretty pictures.  

This poem is about a time or a place.  Maybe it won't make much sense.  Maybe I've been there or I'll never get there, and maybe it's not really a poem about love at all.  But for me, this is love.

Route Six

Stanley Kunitz

The city squats on my back, 

I am heart-sore, stiff-necked,

exasperated.  That's why

I slammed the door,

that's why I tell you now, 

in every house of marriage

there's room for an interpreter.

Let's jump in the car, honey, 

and head straight for the Cape, 

where the cock on our housetop crows

that the weather's fair, 

and my garden waits for me 

to coax it into bloom.

As for those passions left

that flare past understanding, 

like bundles of dead letters

out of our previous lives

that amaze us with their fevers, 

we can stow them in the rear

along with ziggurats of luggage

and Celia, our transcendental cat, 

past-mistress of all languages, 

including Hottentot and silence.

We'll drive non-stop till dawn, 

and if I grow sleepy at the wheel, 

you'll keep me awake by singing

in your bravura Chicago style

Ruth Etting's smoky song, 

"Love Me or Leave Me,"

belting out the choices. 

Light glazes the eastern sky

over Buzzards Bay.

Celia gyrates upward

like a performing seal,

her glistening nostrils aquiver

to sniff the brine-spiked air.

The last stretch toward home!

Twenty summers roll by.