Sealed with a Kiss

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Love does not discriminate, can be found in all walks of life and means different things to different people.  

Just as people may well change as time passes, so too may the love that binds them; it will either accept and adapt to any changes, or not. In the latter case, it does not entirely deaden the spirit of that love which first brought lovers together, but lets it pass into a dreamless sleep from which there is no waking, leaving both parties free to find love again if they can and so choose. I once knew a woman who married for a second time late in life; it was his second marriage too. Each loved both partners dearly. “They were both very different,” she once told me, “...but so was I, that second time, and love fitted us like a glove, just as it had for each of us the first time around...”

A loneliness of the heart can be filled in many ways, not least by finding that special someone who can help fulfil our needs, share our passions and generally be looking for much the same in a life companion as we are ourselves. That’s as near as I can get to defining ‘true’ love’ while not to say its various imitations are any the less meaningful or honest at any given moment in time.

Two people can enjoy sex with each other, for example, without wanting the kind of commitment that being ‘in love’ involves sooner or later. ‘Casual’ sex is a misnomer; there is nothing casual about two adults agreeing to sex simply because a mutual attraction also satisfies a deep-seated need, whether or not those needs are quite the same.

A reader asks if I have anyone in mind when I write love poems. Yes, I do, but only for having felt the power in all its shapes and forms, though having been ‘in love’ for only a short time. My potential partner was killed in a car accident long ago, before we’d had time to come out of our respective closets and tell friends and family we were in a relationship. I never met anyone again who saw me as a potential life partner.  Even so, as I deal with living alone on a physical level, I am never alone on an emotional one.

Loved-ones, living or passed away, whether family, friends or lovers... they never die, but pass into our consciousness and will continue loving and supporting us if we let them. Yes, it is a sentiment at which some may well scoff, but it works for me and can work for them too if they will only give it a go...

SEALED WITH A KISS

We met at a dance,
soon got into romancing
under a moon as misty
as a priest’s glass eye,
voices in the wind making us
laugh, making us cry

We wished on stars,
felt the world cease to turn,
pause, as if eager
to share our first kiss,
voices in the wind sighing
“Yes, yes, yes...”

So began, a fairy tale
that would see us hitching
rides across landscapes
of such joy and tears
as any lifetime sure to bring
true lovers

That first kiss, a blessing
as of Earth Mother
to Her children, lending us
a spirituality
to rise above the many failings
of Society

Through thick and thin,
up against walls
or dancing other nights away
wherever we may be,
we bonded with that very first kiss
into eternity

Come other nights, dawns,
wherever life chanced
to take us, be we awake or asleep
together or apart
a life force would always sustain us,
,our shared heart

If all good things must end,
memory grow dim
and time wing its way to eternity,
be sure of this;
true love lives on forever, once sealed
with a kiss

Copyright R. N. Taber 2022

[Note: This poem is loosely based on an earlier poem that appears under the title ‘Hold the Dream’ in my collection First Person Plural, Assembly Books, 2002.]