[poem] How to fall in love

[kaberett]

Listen.

Find someone who adores what they do
and ask them about it.

Watch sunsets and rivers and slow change
and make space in the hours of your heart
to observe beauty
to honour compassion.

(Notice gifts offered shyly and in passing and in silence.)

Learn to apologise and
to accept apologies and
when it's best to do neither.

Test your limits. Find your boundaries. Press
against them, yearning, but only sometimes, and only while they obliging yield:
don't, if you can help it, burst through
encouraged by the stridency of shame or of its many siblings-
at least not more than once. But when you do

Give yourself whatever space you need to heal. Dare
to trust, and trust again, and hope. Above all else
oh, darling -- dare to wisely sweetly hope.

Comments

[calissa]

Oh! Breathtaking.

[kaberett]

<3!!!

I think I am... actually quite surprised at how positive the reaction to this one has been -- I'm not sure why it's more popular than some of the other recent things and I'm very very curious about unpicking it, heh.

[calissa]

For me, I would say it very much reflects the kind of life I strive to live--gentle, loving, aware. I love to speak to people about their passion and to see them come alive. I try (sometimes unsuccessfully) to slow down and appreciate the gifts of nature. There are times when I want to say something but can't find the words--and your poem explicitly acknowledges and appreciates that.

There is permission here to be kind to oneself. In that, it reminds me of Mary Oliver.