Love Like

[bairnsidhe]

 

Some people love like an avalanche

Their passion building swift and sudden.

They call it falling in love

Because it happens with the force

Of ten tons of snow and ice

Plummeting down a slope.

Some people love like a wildfire

The lust overheating their skin.

They call it burning with desire

Because it hurts with the scorch

Of ten acres of tree and grass

Kindling one spark into an inferno.

But there are people who do not love

Like a disaster, natural or otherwise.

They are not the tornado or the earthquake.

Their love is built, memory on memory

Like sandbags holding back a flood.

It is filled, small kindness and small kindness

Like a water bottle passed from a relief worker

To someone who looked like they needed it.

These people wake to their love like the survivor

Of someone else’s avalanche, confused and shaken

And happy for the timely arrival of a Saint Bernard.

Their passion blooms like ash-fed larkspur

A sign of recovery from the disruption of red flame

In the rich shades of purple blossom and green leaf.

Be then kind to those who love like life,

Slow to grow and hard to build

Yet always indeed finding a way.

Comments

[antisocialite_forum]

>> Slow to grow and hard to build
Yet always indeed finding a way. <<

My favorite type of love.
And, I think, the one most necessary for lasting intimacy. It's what family is built on, whatever form family takes.

- Atem

[bairnsidhe]

I prefer that slow-and-hard type too. It takes a while to make it, and it's work to maintain it, but it holds up to what life brings better. It's also less overwhelming for me, but then, I get overwhelmed by squishes, so I'm not exactly unbiased here.

[technoshaman]

Yes, please. I think I've finally learnt to slow down...

[bairnsidhe]

That's good. Having a chance to do this slowly tends to lead to lasting relationships, in my experience.

[mdlbear]

This really nails it for this demiromantic. Or whatever I am. Thank you.

[bairnsidhe]

I'm glad it appeals. I'm not exactly easy to pin down on the label side of things, but the one thing I can say with certainty is I like things to happen slowly. I'm with my Life Partner due to many years of friendship and one day going "oh. We're in love. Huh, how'd that happen?" I've never quite known how super passionate people do all that so fast and not get utterly beat.

[thnidu]

Forty-nine years and two months ago, almost to the day, I walked into the local campaign HQ my uncle was in charge of to say hi. He said "Oh, good, you're just in time. Rene here needs a partner to go out for signatures." The person mentioned turned and looked at me and, as she told me much later, her heart sank... because it recognized that the messy, confused-looking 19-year-old standing in the doorway was her beshert, the match intended for her by heaven (or as good as).

So we spent the afternoon and evening gathering signatures, putting up signs, addressing envelopes, and picking up take-out pizza for the roomful of volunteers. And it was sometime after midnight that I realized that this was more than just a nice afternoon-evening with a very nice girl.

About two years later I proposed. Two more years and we were wed. That lasted 39 years: the rest of her life.

I have loved others before and since, but she will always be the great love of my life.

[bairnsidhe]

Oh that is just beautiful, I'm so glad you got so many years with someone who touched you so deeply. Love like that is hard to find and so very special.

May you meet again in heaven (or as good as).

[thnidu]

Thank you. That's sweet. At weddings or on hearing of an engagement I often say "May you be at least as happy for at least as long as my wife and I." Even to people who don't know me, like the wedding party being photographed on the steps of a building,* my receding white hair and white beard hint that that's a pretty long time.

* Their reaction was pretty clear: they liked it, and thanked me. :-D

(The icon is a pic of a guinea pig we had, whose name she took for her blog username.)