The Uncarved Blog

I wrote Our Meditation Love Poem, about 4 ½ years ago, and decided to post it now, for Valentine’s Day. I was visiting my sweetheart during the week at her care facility and wrote the poem and story behind it that Saturday, September 4, 2010, almost 4 ½ months after she moved in.

I was remembering the meditation we had this week; my chest area filled up with a great inner warmth and bliss of loving you. Tonight, I was listening to Leonard Cohen singing his songs of love, and started writing this poem from that memory, that feeling, and also remembered the quote in the film, Tristan and Isolde, when he is dying and he says to her, “You were right—life is greater than death, but love is greater than either.” He was referring to what she had said when they first met, about following your heart, and that love in one’s life fills up what would otherwise be an empty shell of duty and honor, quoting John Donne’s The Good Morrow, where he writes:

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares,
And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest,
…..
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.

So I came up with this poem, Our Meditation Love Poem. I found myself writing a 17-syllable line, the sum of a haiku in 3 lines. I liked the flow and decided to make each line 17 syllables long, each one having its own internal rhythm and flow. I wanted to write 11 lines for some reason, maybe thinking there were 11 syllables in each line. But now I remember there are 17. But I would then have to write 6 more lines, and right now I can’t see it. I naturally divided them into 2 stanzas of 4 lines each followed by a stanza of 3 at the end. It seems to have worked well.

Related: See this #RomanticPoem for #ValentinesDay: i carry your heart with me by e.e. cummings. This Quiet Love, a #LovePoem from Kenny, for Sally on #ValentinesDay. ‘In Our Loving Eyes’ a poem by @kenchawkin remembering a special love with Sally Peden.

Enjoy reading other beautiful love poems posted on The Uncarved Blog.

Tags: duty and honor, follow your heart, John Donne, Leonard Cohen, life and death, love, love over duty or honor, love poem, meditation, our meditation love poem, The Good Morrow, the power of love, Tristan and Isolde, valentine's day

This entry was posted on February 14, 2015 at 6:56 am and is filed under My poems, Poetry, Sally Peden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.