Arts & Entertainment

Benicia Love Poem: TO LOVE, ITSELF

Each day Benicia Patch will publish submissions to the annual Benicia Love Poem Contest. Readers are encouraged to comment on the poems.

TO LOVE, ITSELF by Deborah Silverman

Love, you sneaky scoundrel,
you made your entrance - 
not with the brave, assertive flourish
that has hearts tremble and rupture,
but in stealthy, measured steps.

I, a young teen, frittered my days
adrift in the rituals of school and dates,
lounging in the ease and shelter
of a functional home, an orderly family.
I was unconcerned with cold war,
caring  more about what  I wore. 

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You, an intruder, breached the threshold,    
shined your light into the night of my
secured and insulated disarray,
rife with fixations and sublimations.
You rummaged through every corner
before I came alert to your presence. 

By then you had found, in the mess of
quirks and foibles,  something of value.
Settling in, you seized what you wanted,
but replaced it with profuse offerings
that have endured through ache and bliss;
you brought me my one-and-only beloved,
and stayed. And stayed….   

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