Helen gifted us with season as the theme for today’s song lyrics. I’ve added an ‘s’ and selected the song Seasons of Love, written by Jonathan D. Larson. I went with the Glee version for the video (lyrics included). With this song, it is all about the lyrics despite a slow start. Hear/read it all the way through (three minutes) to get the complete message. I like it.
Look both ways in Spring, Summer, Winter, and Fall.
Mind the gaps and happy Yuletide, Y’all.
It is the season for love.
She walked into the majestic hall glowing with womanly confidence,
her body flowing gracefully, moving like a soft breeze across the floor,
all eyes looked as her light summer gown flowed on and off her soft satin skin
as it shed her refreshing scent, filling the air with the aroma of orchids.
He looked up to her as she briefly paused at the top of the grand stairway
as all sounds in the hall ended for him and he felt his heart fill his chest
with brightness and the promise of soon feeling her divinely elegant touch,
as he studied her footsteps gliding down toward him, his desire piqued.
Eyes on her, he rose up without consciousness of his actions, as he left Earth
and entered into a world of enchanted love and impassioned romance,
soon their eyes met and all visions of reality left their unconscious minds,
instantly they were face to face, then hand in hand, and finally heart to heart.
“May I have the honor of this dance, most lovely and pleasant flower?”
“Of course, mon amour chérie. You are the universal eternity I seek.”
The orchestra stopped playing, but everyone heard the heavenly music
of lovers in love as they moved effortlessly, gracefully to the dance floor.
©Bill Reynolds 12/06/2018
Look both ways, but dance arm in arm into the gaps of eternity.
I’ve been working on two other somewhat unrelated essays on the paradox of love for a long time. For months, it has been slow going for several reasons. It’s not the writing. Getting a handle on some aspects of human nature has been a high bar for me. I may be a little reluctant to publish — not totally sure why. Furthermore, I am multi-interested, but when I try to multi-task, as we call it, I FUBAR, as we also call it.
Romance novels are big sellers, and maybe I’ll write one some day. For now, I want to write about the reality of why we are as we seem to be. Romance novels are works of fiction, but there is some reality-based reason we read them.
Why do we love when we know we shouldn’t? How can we love people who do not love back? Why does our greatest pleasure, love, hurt? Why continue loving when it hurts?
And what does sex have to do with it? Obviously, with some love it’s ruled out. In other cases, it is expected.
Then I saw this poem in The Sun magazine. Part of the paradox of love for me is the pain. The pleasure of romantic love defies description (doesn’t keep me from trying). But is it enough to endure the “love hurts” painful kind of situation? Do we love people and wish we didn’t? Conversely, are there people we don’t love, but wish we did?
I would say no, but I would be wrong. Love overpowers all forms of wisdom, logic, caution, safety, and potential for pain. We’d lie for love, we’d die for love. So many of us go into relationships having experienced the pain and suffering, and knowing what another relationship might bring. Some of us are in those painful relationships. That is what is so great about it.
When I read this poem, I thought she had nailed it. That poem reflects exactly what I am talking about when I try to put the paradox of love into an understandable and logical framework of words.
Due to copyright law, I cannot publish the poem here, but the magazine allows me to post a link to their web page.
Please click this link to the poem Loving You Burns Like the Shingles by Terri Kirby Erickson and read it for yourself at The Sun’s magazine website.
I’ve added a little youtube of the song, Love Hurts, by Nazareth. Sorry for the downer. We love to love, and love is not a downer.
Look both ways, to the past and toward the future.
But focus on the here and now. Mind gaps in everything.
Helen’s theme for today’s Song Lyric Sunday is first. It took me a few minutes (ok, over 30) to turn up something from my play list. I selected The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack. The video is a cover by George Michael with lyrics. One of the all time most beautiful songs, in my opinion.
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
Roberta Flack
Songwriters: Ewan McColl — The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face lyrics © The Royalty Network Inc.
Look both ways and listen to beautiful music.
Mind the gaps and fill them with love.
Have humans always loved?
Have we always loved as we now do?
Will there always be a forever love? And
is it true – as they say, love conquers all?
What is this love, which we feel but not see?
Or do we see love? How long do we love?
What is the paradox of such love?
Is it that we have only one word
for so many different loves and types of?
©Bill Reynolds
“…I would like to beg you … to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves … to live everything. Live the questions now … then, someday … you will gradually … live your way into the answer.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903, Letters to a Young Poet.
For all things and every day, but most especially in love, look both ways.
The gaps will always be there — in your mind.
Live into your answers.
I was early to bed last night so I did not see Helen’s Song Lyric Sunday theme until this morning: Listen.
The Beatles classic was in my brain, ears, eyes, and on my tongue as my lips whispered the words, “let me whisper in your ear.”
This bit of boomer nostalgia is less than two minutes.
“A poem is never finished, merely abandoned.” Or something like that. In this case, I have kept this poem in the files of my computer for more than a year as I worked and reworked it. Time to let it go.
With the blessing of Mary Oliver, as I learn to write poetry, I try to write as the masters do or did (I copy, or emulate, them). In some such cases, I re-write a poem line by line. In this case, I simply rewrote the poem with more contemporary English vernacular, changing words and lines to my liking. I hope some spirit of the original piece remains. Sadly, I’ve lost track of the original poem: perhaps it is from the Bard’s R&J. I confess to an embarrassing lack of recall.
Maybe someone will comment, “this may be from….”
Would you be the love in my heart?
Then take the hard-path from deep in you, to us.
Can you be my Lover, and still be true to who you are?
Turn over your passion with love and with lust
Stay loving and gentle in all the ways deep within you
Be true to you but bring all your grace into us.
Rag off caution and care, pour love and praise on me.
Satisfy me with all the love and devotion in your heart
Remain true to yourself and loyal to our blissful passion
Bring your best love to our spot and love me today
Would a love goddess so heavenly bless me?
Shall our endless love be your heart’s eternal duty?
©Bill Reynolds, 11/8/2018
Look both ways in love.
The best hoped for outcome is seldom considered.
Miss not the gaps,
those unseen and unfilled spaces upon which we so often trip and fall.
