More Than Anything
/To love,
not a little or lightly,
not in passing,
not like the love
of marmalade on toast
or the delight
in a clear view
out a window stripped
of its winter skin
and polished to a sheen,
but to love something
more than anything,
more than spring
loves the first blossoms,
more than ocean waves
love the shore, coming again
and again, without fail
day in and day out;
to love after love has died
and only the burnt edges
of our vows remain,
all the words gone to ash,
to love when we have become
a discarded thing,
our once beheld beauty
now a monarch on the peg
collecting dust,
and yet to love, again,
not a little or lightly,
but spread like marmalade
across our lifetime
because we finally have
that clear view
and we see the blossoms
in each other
instead of the wrinkles
on our winter skin.
© Nick LeForce
All Rights Reserved
This poem was inspired by a prompt from Roger Housden:
What I truly love more than anything is...
One of the great gifts of the very young, a gift often reclaimed as we age, is the ability to look beyond "looks," to appreciate the spirit of a person and to recognize that the essential life force in each of us has the capacity to blossom no matter what season we might be in or what suffering we may have endured. I have come to love this essential life force, the human flame found in each of us, more than anything.
What, or who, do you love more than anything?
Complete Roger's prompt:
What I truly love more than anything is...
