Defining love

Is love
finding solidity in emptiness:
a balustrade beneath the hand?

Or is it
the boy in the car seat behind you,
as you drive up roads known and unknown,
asking ‘where is God?’
Is he love?

Where is love?

The night you married his father
your stomach seven-months big with child,
you wept, as if you knew
the ruby would fall from your golden ring,
like the promises you made each other,
lost now.

When the baby, sluiced into the world
through your waters,
was given to you, red-faced, squalling
to hold close to your milky breast -
was that love you felt?

And, as the world was honed
to the body of another lover – after the divorce;
holding himself still within your deepest part,
was that love, you whispered in his ear?

As, filled with gratitude,
you came and came and came
legs wrapped around him
like jasmine tendrils on a trellis?

The dutiful incantations
at the end of phone calls
are approximations …
you have the airport farewells down pat.

But what do you tell your boy
when he asks
‘who do you love?’
what do you say?

20.10