A SIMPLE AND CONCISE DEFINITION OF LOVE
BASED ON EXTENSIVE EMPIRICAL EXPERIENCE

Love is wet, sticky, juicy.
It flows seeps surges and sloshes,
leaves stains, carves canyons,
pulls to it the roots of grasses.

Love creates the landscapes we move through,
even deserts, where the only love is deadly.
Love is gathered together or sinks from sight,
condenses and is pressed between bodies.

Love trails double trace wagon tracks
over cheekbones and hills,
looks for an ocean or a sky empty of clouds
or pores between grains of sand.

Smooth cobbles on a rocky knob
were left there by love,
and pine slabs burnt to coals
glow with love and the breathing of needles.

Love draws creatures thirsty at night
who leave signs in red mud that say
"Love brought us here
but we could not stay."

Love slakes thirst or salts the tongue,
can wash away sin or infect a wound.
A trickle of love can save a life.
Rhizomes root in the muck after love's flood subsides

Love is the soup and catalyst of reactions
where many dissolve into one.
Love rises with sap and blood and sun,
swells leaves and lips and makes straight the limp.

Love cycles in chains of jangling circles,
bound tight in crystals
or loose in bangles beaded
and layered between skin. 

Love breathes in, breathes out,
dissolves granite into clouds,
decomposes the complex into simple forms
and concocts them back to complexity.

Love gurgles down gullies, throats,
bubbles from springs and sores,
sweats from pores, oozes from glands,
spurts and clots from cuts deepened to bedrock and bone.

Love flows in the place between fast and slow rivers,
cascades between eyes,
beads in the hollow place between breasts
and whitens the necks and wings of magpies and crows.

Love is the blessing of drought and the curse of flood.
It makes gravid the insistence of gravity
down through the moist dark tubes,
and spins lightning arcs through coiled hearts.

Love's froth floats in forests of twisted hair and tendons.
The white residues of stones are the spores of love.
It meanders across valleys deep with its compost.
It permeates all membranes, saturates all matrices.

Love is the muscle of rusty wheels
and the resistance in the creaking rods.
Love rattles from the heads of comets
and spreads open the eyes of peacock tails.

Love falls from the sky,
rises to the surface, leaps into the ether.
Love turns its polarity onto itself
and spins rings around the moon.

Drink love. Evaporate in love.
Harden with love. Tumesce with love.
Split love and cascade
the electron flux into sweetness.

Seek love like only the thirsty can
and suck hard the matrix wherever you can.
Let it thaw deep into the fissures
of rock and flesh.

Fall with love. Rise with love.
Surprise yourself and cry with love
where it leaks from the bones of the earth,
where it seeks the unspoken lower places.

And always, face deep into face,
make love. Make love
and once made let it endlessly flow,
never reduced, never destroyed,

love
transformed
by love
transformed.


© 2003 by Richard W. Todd

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