[Poetry Friday] “Love Poem” by Maggie Smith

Fats here.

Love is perhaps one of the most talked about subjects in poetry. Today’s poem is no different, yet it sort of is. In her piece, Love Poem, Maggie Smith writes a love poem addressed to the world. It’s another reason why I admire Smith’s gift with words. This is still part of her poetry collection, Good Bones.

Poetry Friday round-up is hosted by Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect!

“Sometimes the best thing I can do to improve a poem is to loosen my grip on it… if you tie up every loose end, if you scrub all the strangeness and wildness and ambiguity out of it, you can revise the life right out of a poem if you’re not careful. You can put its light out.”

Love Poem

What can I give you? You have plenty
of seas, seven at last count, and another

version of yourself beneath them, unseen:
doppelgänger caves and mountains,

the tallest secret ranges not for climbing.
Besides, I can’t make you a sea

or fill each transparent wave with equally
transparent fish. I can’t assemble

a forest or populate the trees with birds.
You have all the cranes you could want,

feathered or folded from paper. Look,
I have these two babies—but you?

You have more children than you can feed,
more than you can keep alive. Every day

you lose thousands, gain thousands.
No wonder the numbers mean nothing.

You need more than I or anyone can give.
But, fool that I am, I love you. I’m hot

for you. Here, warm your hands by the fire.
I made it with myself and a match.

#WomenReadWomen2019