The bond of love is not desire, but need.
Desire fades; need with wisdom grows:
The need to be needed, and the need to need.

But why the need to need when one is freed
By needing less of that which comes and goes?
The bond of love is not desire, but need.

And why need to be needed? Why should one cede
What one might well enjoy for what one owes?
The need to be needed, and the need to need

Are longings of the sower for the seed,
And the seed for the sower, who whistles as he sows.
The bond of love is not desire, but need.

Love is longing, by dint of death decreed,
The beauty and the terror life bestows,
The need to be needed, and the need to need

Embedded in one's being, as indeed,
Being needs Creation, which it once chose.
The bond of love is not desire, but need:
The need to be needed, and the need to need.

VESTMENTS ARE THE WORDS; THE BODY, FEELING

Vestments are the words; the body, feeling;
As love is clothed in words to fit the fashion,
Letting art romanticize its passion --
Embellishing, soliciting, revealing.
Nor can a truth be true without concealing
The thousand other truths that need attention,
Insisting on at least a passing mention,
Not willing to let go without appealing.
Each love, therefore, shows more by showing less,
'Neath cloth cut well to hint at subtleties,
Setting off the swaths of naked skin.
Do, then, pay due diligence to dress,
As what one says discovers what one sees,
Yielding to and shaping what's within.

THERE IS A BEAUTY IN THE COLOR BROWN

There is a beauty in the color brown
Which brings to mind the muted light of caring.
Earth tones: roots, ground leafmeal, seeds, and soil;
Nuts and bark, broad rivers thick with toil;
Tree trunks in a clearing, nothing wearing,
Yet holding high their single woven crown.

For me brown brings to mind your caring eyes,
Innocent and gentle as a doe's.
Vested in your love, my own love grows;
Each thought, each hope, each breath within you lies.

DAVID

David is a person much belovd:
A sweet and gentle spirit, inward bound.
Viewing David's agonies uncovered,
Immolations fifty years have smothered,
Doesn't help one know why he has drowned.

MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS OUGHT TO BE FRIENDS

Mothers and daughters ought to be friends,
But there is a lot that gets in the way.
The determined pursuit of opposite ends,
Ends up as harsh words we would rather not say.

Yet storms tend to pass, and passions abate,
And love to outlast the days of despair,
And comfort to come to those who would wait,
And friendships to flourish in those who forbear.

So we must be patient, and fight, if we must,
With the knowledge that love will endure what we do.
The anger is wind, and the angels are dust,
But love will be waiting whenever we're through.

FAITH

Faith finds within her heart a windy sea,
A restless place of homeless, hopeless peace
In which there's neither passion nor release,
The changeless void whose changes never cease,
Having wrought this unwilled will to be.

SHADOW

Shadow is my ever-present shadow,
Having little in her life but me.
Affection is in her a true vocation,
Destined as she is for a relation
Of which love is both salvager and sea,
Windswept world and oft-recited credo.

I am a poet and webmaster of the popular poetry site, Poems for Free, at http://www.poemsforfree.com.