by Richard Levine
I think of us, of how, at first,
being kind seemed enough.
Though we didn’t say it, we thought,
if forests grow from red-clover meadows,
why not love?
But like and care are not strong enough
to send down roots deep enough,
or carry water far and high enough
to make them more than what they are.
And they are not love.
Whatever else love is, it is more
than like and care, more than wanting
to believe it is where it is not.
I tried. You did, too. And we were kind,
until we hurt each other so thoroughly.
And that red-clover meadow,
where we first made love and laughed,
might be a mature forest by now.
But it never was ours.
Richard Levine is the author of Taming the Hours: An Almanac with Marginalia, Now in Contest (Fernwood Press, 2023), Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2019), Contiguous States (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and five chapbooks, including A Tide of a Hundred Mountains (Bright Hill Press, 2012), winner of the 2012 Bright Hill Chapbook Prize. An Advisory Editor of BigCityLit.com and co-editor of Invasion of Ukraine 2022: Poems, he received the 2021 Connecticut Poetry Society Award. His poetry appears on the websites of American Life in Poetry, Poetry Foundation and the American Academy of Poets. A Vietnam veteran, his work is archived in LaSalle University’s Special Collections Library.
Website: richardlevine107.com.