Login
|
Join PoetrySoup
Home
Submit Poems
Login
Sign Up
Member Home
My Poems
My Quotes
My Profile & Settings
My Inboxes
My Outboxes
Soup Mail
Contest Results/Status
Contests
Poems
Poets
Famous Poems
Famous Poets
Dictionary
Types of Poems
Videos
Resources
Syllable Counter
Articles
Forum
Blogs
Poem of the Day
New Poems
Anthology
Grammar Check
Greeting Card Maker
Classifieds
Quotes
Short Stories
Member Area
Member Home
My Profile and Settings
My Poems
My Quotes
My Short Stories
My Articles
My Comments Inboxes
My Comments Outboxes
Soup Mail
Poetry Contests
Contest Results/Status
Followers
Poems of Poets I Follow
Friend Builder
Soup Social
Poetry Forum
New/Upcoming Features
The Wall
Soup Facebook Page
Who is Online
Link to Us
Member Poems
Poems - Top 100 New
Poems - Top 100 All-Time
Poems - Best
Poems - by Topic
Poems - New (All)
Poems - New (PM)
Poems - New by Poet
Poems - Random
Poems - Read
Poems - Unread
Member Poets
Poets - Best New
Poets - New
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems Recent
Poets - Top 100 Community
Poets - Top 100 Contest
Famous Poems
Famous Poems - African American
Famous Poems - Best
Famous Poems - Classical
Famous Poems - English
Famous Poems - Haiku
Famous Poems - Love
Famous Poems - Short
Famous Poems - Top 100
Famous Poets
Famous Poets - Living
Famous Poets - Most Popular
Famous Poets - Top 100
Famous Poets - Best
Famous Poets - Women
Famous Poets - African American
Famous Poets - Beat
Famous Poets - Cinquain
Famous Poets - Classical
Famous Poets - English
Famous Poets - Haiku
Famous Poets - Hindi
Famous Poets - Jewish
Famous Poets - Love
Famous Poets - Metaphysical
Famous Poets - Modern
Famous Poets - Punjabi
Famous Poets - Romantic
Famous Poets - Spanish
Famous Poets - Suicidal
Famous Poets - Urdu
Famous Poets - War
Poetry Resources
Anagrams
Bible
Book Store
Character Counter
Cliché Finder
Poetry Clichés
Common Words
Copyright Information
Grammar
Grammar Checker
Homonym
Homophones
How to Write a Poem
Lyrics
Love Poem Generator
New Poetic Forms
Plagiarism Checker
Poetics
Poetry Art
Publishing
Random Word Generator
Spell Checker
Store
What is Good Poetry?
Word Counter
Email Poem
Your IP Address: 216.73.216.20
Your Email Address:
Required
Email Address Not Valid.
To Email Address:
Email Address Not Valid.
Required
Subject
Required
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem
You, Mariana—deepest trench of my knowing I call you by name not to possess it but because it is the only prayer I have ever known how to say You are the sea—each wave not an argument but a hymn a hymn without end a hymn that the gulls carry in their throats splitting the sky into syllables of salt and longing I am the mountain—Marcus peaks jagged, stubborn and proud but even granite shifts at your touch I have watched falcons trace the arc of your tides wings trembling as if even they could feel your gravity I am no prophet, Mariana but let me tell you what I know before the first wave kissed the first shore before hydrogen took shape in the dark before God divided waters from land we were— not as we are now, flesh and bone, tide and stone— but as the thought of love itself waiting to be spoken into existence And then we were born carried on the wings of albatrosses the first explorers of an empty earth I, the cliff that held the sky You, the current that shaped continents Do you see now your waters carved the ridges of my spine your waves taught my canyons their depth even the hawk circling above us owes his flight to the winds you stirred I’ve spent years dissecting the mechanisms of us through lenses through prayers through equations that collapse under your gaze What are the odds, I ask, that quarks and gravity conspired to create a you and then, further still, that a me would stumble into your tidepool one April morning Even the kestrels tilted their wings at my calculations The universe is not random, Mariana it is intention it is you I remember the first time I mapped your voice a current through my ribcage that left me gasping for a language I did not yet know You spoke of Neruda, of Rumi and I, the scientist, could only stammer in monosyllables unprepared for the poetry of your existence Your laugh, Mariana was a theory proven true a sound so radiant the terns mistook it for the sun and flew toward it instead I’ve studied every treatise on love— Plato’s Symposium, Aquinas’ Summa, Solomon’s love song— but none of them explain how your hands—small continents of motion— can anchor me mid-storm Your touch is storge, the familiar warmth of home It is philia, the friendship that steadies the ground beneath me It is eros, the pull of moon to tide a force no textbook can quantify And It is agape, the unreasoned grace that binds us beyond logic Do you know, Mariana even the ocean dreams of the mountains not from duty but from longing for the peaks it will never touch And I—rooted in earth, fixed to equations— have spent a lifetime envying your fluidity your capacity to change without losing yourself The pelicans, your sentinels skim the surface of you while my larks anchor themselves to the grasses, their songs rising—straining—to meet your gulls mid-flight But here is the secret you have taught me— Even the mountain must surrender to the sea Even the eagle must land Even the scientist must kneel before the mystery he cannot solve Mariana, I have worshipped you In ways both ancient and modern I have written sonnets to your shoreline calculated the chemistry of your tears and prayed to the God who made you— a God who, in His infinite wisdom crafted you as ocean and me as mountain so we might spend eternity teaching each other how to change The gulls and hawks, caught in the thermals of our love circle above us They are our witnesses Tell me, my love— what is the measure of a life together Is it the years we’ve gathered or the moments that stretch beyond time Is it the laughter rippling like wind through a wheatfield or the stillness that settles like mist on the sea I do not know I only know that you are my map and my compass my kestrel and my tern my equation and my proof my prayer and its answer And if I, Marcus, am earth— then let me erode for you Let my peaks crumble into sand to join your waves Let me be reshaped by your love until we are neither tide nor stone but the horizon itself— infinite indivisible whole
CAPTCHA Preview
Type the characters you see in the picture
Required