Home Planet News

a journal of literature & art

Poetry of Issue 9: How You Know

How You Know

How do you know there’s love?

 

I’ll tell you how you know there’s love.

 

Love is there when turning to each other you turn into each other too.

 

Think about loving your dog or cat: the frolicking mew or ruff on the ground in a

           welter of beast and you; the lift and the purr or the pant blobbing up to your

           shoulder; your ear, lapped and drenched with loving goop, if not devoured.

Think of your favorite peanut butter stuck to the ceiling of your mouth so that when

           you were asked a question suddenly your voice was the voice of peanut butter

           itself: the viscous, delicious, inscrutable ooze you love even to this day.

And think of your love, not of creatures or things, but of doing: hiking, climbing,

           jogging, swimming, biking, playing. You become not the trail or the hill or the

           road or the pool or the pond or the sea or the game, but hiking, climbing,

           jogging, swimming, biking, playing itself. So that in France, you jumped in the

          Mediterranean, scaled three alps, and pedaled from château to château to

           château. Well, I did, anyway. Substitute what you love to do, you’ll know when

           there’s love.

And now that you’ve gotten this far, that we’ve gotten this far together, and you’ve

          digested the above—and why else would you have kept on to here?—then I am

           where you are, which is here. And part of me, this part of me

is rolling in your mind, and is part of you; the turn to each other has turned us into

           ourselves; outward is inward; two are miraculously one.

And there is love.

by James B. Nicola

Home Planet News