232. When Your Lover Is Sad

When your lover is sad,
offer her or him
a glass of fresh water.
Invite the lover
to take a bath
while you cook something
welcome. Play
some music the lover
likes. Make sure
there are fresh linens
on the bed for when
the lover wants to sleep
or re-explore the contours
of passion. --Oh, and every
lover of every gender
likes flowers. Common
sweet-pea blossoms
will work. Or almost
any wildflower. Or of course
just one red, fragrant rose.
And wash the lover's clothes.


Hans Ostrom 2014

228. Love-Equation

Let a big red L stand for Love, a set of arbitrary elements. Multiply (L) by p, where p is equal to or greater than 2 (persons), and the result is equal to or greater than complicated.

216. The Season of Mercy

It is the month of desire.

I wake up and find you

and hold one of those unoriginal thoughts

lovers are bound to hold:

we could be any two living here at any time.

Look at the red morning clouds

and the blue coastal hills that absorb

the salt of those acquisitive waves.

We yearn for the whole love;

we wait for it to spring to life

like the blessed perfect leaf of a beautiful plant.

Do we seek our souls through love,

the perfect shape of us that lives

in these rough shapes?

And thereby do we implicitly prove the Soul

through dissatisfaction

and love's displacements?

Proof of the world fills the morning glass:

window, mirror, bowl, and spectacle.

Proof of our dying, well, it comes and goes:

each breath, each push

of blood from heart to palm.

This holding at dawn

wants more than versions of the world

            in the morning glass.

It seems to want a twenty-fifth hour,

an eighth day, one further season:

the season of mercy

            when orange groves fill our every window

and love for the first time

holds us as we have held each other.

Hans Ostrom 2013