juicy hearts

And so, another Valentine's Day is upon us...

I sometimes think that love toys with me, sits and watches, bobbing its head like a cat to keep its green eyes on me. Occasionally, I glimpse love: I see it, fleetingly, as in the face of a passing stranger or in the wildness of a sparrow alighting on a railing not more than two feet from my hand--

More often, I see love in the faces of friends and family, in the gentle summer breezes that bend the upper tree branches stretched out towards the hazy blue sky, or in the odd lumbering gait of injured hearts--

Most certainly, I see love in my quiet moments, when I cease my striving and my activity and my frenzy, when I quiet my soul and stop comparing notes. It is there, in the moments when I stop trying to measure the things I've lost, the relationships I deserve, the places I hope to be, the ambitions I cannot achieve... Love comes in those moments, quiet and observed, like a deer pawing delicately in a clearing in the early morning dew, wet back and cautious eyes, and not a breath of movement as I observe its approach... Love comes truly in a quieted heart.

So, for all those in love,
for all those who wish for love,
and for all those with an aching heart,
I wish you all the joy of Love, unasked and unsought,
in the quiet realms
of newly born spirit...

* * *

Passing stranger! you do not know
How longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking,
Or she I was seeking
(It comes to me as a dream)

I have somewhere surely
Lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other,
Fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,

You grew up with me,
Were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become
not yours only nor left my body mine only,

You give me the pleasure of your eyes,
face, flesh as we pass,
You take of my beard, breast, hands,
in return,

I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you
when I sit alone or wake at night, alone
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

-Walt Whitman

* * *

I suppose it's something like Rumi says:
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.

Maybe I'll begin to see a little more clearly in the coming year. Maybe I'll meet people that I didn't even realize I loved, the strangers who I've been longing for without even knowing about it. And maybe, somewhere along the way, that'll mean finding out how to be myself and how, in this wide and lonesome world, to love someone else without obliterating myself... If the coming year brings even a fleeting glimpse of these things--the connectedness of Love and the beauty of Being and the dignity of Self--well, I suppose it'll be a good time. So let that bleeding heart ooze and don't hesitate to embrace this moment of contact...