Before Love

This poem is off my facebook page. If you'd like to read more you can check me out here. https://www.facebook.com/JackieMillerPoetryArt/

BEFORE LOVE

Before you can know love
You must witness the night
Feel the wind whipping at your back
Like an oar breaking through the freezing water
What you hid in your pocket
And secretly saved for yourself
You must let this go

This countryside is vacant now
Grass no longer grows where kind words have been sparse
But we must walk
You must walk and walk until you fear your feet may give out
As you lose your way the crows circle around
Grazing the sky with hazy afterthoughts of freedom

Before you can know love
You must follow in the footsteps of the carcass rotting on the side of the road
You must feel his pain and remember your immortality
For he too was traveling this road
Who journeyed the path with plans
And a beating heart

Before you can know kindness
You must drink the bitter elixir
And wake up in the midst of the storm
You must grasp for it until your hands give up
Until they grip your bed
And the blankets in your empty bed swallow you whole

Then and only then does love show her face
She urges you to get up out of this bed
She sends you back out into the world
In a sea of faces reflecting back her voice
All whispering for love