Words of Love
The night is full of promise
(How familiar these words are).
Crickets sing their enchantments.
The evening star shines high and steady,
And later comes the moon.
They tread their radiant way, east to west.
(How often these words have been spoken.)
Oh, the powerful magic of this,
This endless moving from day through night.
Oh, how you are loved,
In numberless languages and ways
And places and times.
And these words of love are written on my soul:
The promise of the night―the evening star―
The radiance of the moon―the dawn, the dusk.
I will die, and my life will have been spent
Sometimes, too often, in sorrow, fear and boredom.
But it will have held you―
The changing light, the crickets, the shapes of trees at dusk.
And sometimes, not often, I know that is enough.
Oh, do not hurt my beloved.
Do not march across her
With your wars and weed-whackers,
Your tanks, your bulldozers, your bugspray.
Do not send weapons
Across her beautiful sky
Where only the constellations should travel.
Listen to her promise,
Observe her mysteries,
Give her your words of love.
It is enough.
Alix Greenwood writes: I am a white, middle-class British Lesbian, born 1963, now living in the US. "Words of Love" was written in October 2003. My ability to write poetry ebbs & flows ; I've just gone through a 5-year dry patch but am glad to say a few poems have trickled through recently
