Richard Feynman: Letter to Arline
I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you.
Amy Lowell: A Decade
When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Edward Harkness: Two Rondeaux
Each time we kiss, love, it’s the first kiss.
The others? Gone. Some I well recall.
More and more I repeated myself. Even this
note to sparrows, willows, summer and fall.
Neil Shepard: Mating Behaviors of Storks, Egrets, Humans
We’re out of love again and wandering
with other birdwatchers over the cedar shakes,
spying on spring nesting sites where great
migrations end and settle into familiar patterns
of rearing and weaning.
Mary Jane White: Lindeman
you led me alone
into the sandhills, told me how you were named
for the lindens that grow like smaller oaks
or elms in Europe’s parks
Edna St. Vincent Millay: Ebb
I know what my heart is like
Since your love died
Bill Knott: Sonnet
The way the world is not
astonished at you
it doesn’t blink a leaf
when we step from the house