SALISBURY LANDSCAPES POEM 3

Love is so large an abstract noun that it has its own festival. The secrets and alchemy of love have also been delved into - the passion aroused by oysters or strawberries being still a well-known aphrodisiac. The heart is where love has been located and we still have Valentine's hearts to show our love graphically for our sweetheart - the one we are sweet on.

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“In a word, it was impossible for me to separate her, in the past or in the present, from the innermost life of my life.” Charles Dickens

Proportioned

How big should my love for you be?

One must keep things in proportion,

So as flour to sugar to egg in a cake,

What volume should rise to the occasion?

If I were to measure the circumference,

Would I then know the parameters,

Of our relationship as proper as it is?

Then we would know how to approach it.

Could I write a list of ingredients?

Does love have a recipe with steps,

Instructing us how to create it,

Folding or beating to a batter to bake?

I think not for my love is as wide as an ocean,

So to push it into a basin is only for fools,

We are but fools when in love they say,

So perhaps this is what we must do.

"And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth, 'You owe me.' Look at what happens with love like that. It lights up the sky."