Life Experience
The hottest day recorded.
Towards ten at night
The rain started.
We walked out
Into the garden, naked,
enjoying the refreshing rain.
The lawn was squelchy
underfoot.
We lay down together,
and
made mud.
From Poems about love. How could you know?
Read more? Amazon book or Kindle download
Fifty kinds of love is the longest poem in Poems about love.
It is full of ideas and observations – some serious, some appearing to be “just playing with words”. The strange thing is that in the jokey parts there are often things that you would recognise as true.
The poem is divided up into numerous topics. I’ll start with two in this posting – Young love and The highs and lows of love.
Love without a care.
Love without caution.
Love without commitment.
Love without a risk assessment.
Love without a care.
Love in the fresh air.
Love where the grass is greener.
Love in pastures new.
Love where the air is cleaner.
Love where the sky is blue.
Love at the crossroads.
Love that’s an uphill struggle.
Love that’s on the way up!
Love on a mountain top.
Love on a slippery slope.
Love that’s downhill from now on.
Love that’s without hope,
though hope lingers on.
Love
that’s the end of the road.
Comments and questions welcomed
FACEBOOK LINK
Read all the poems
You can read all the poems in the book by buying or downloading it on Amazon. LINK.
If you get the book please give it a star rating. I’d love some feedback so I’d really welcome comments on the book.
More background and poems to follow in future blog articles.
Here is the text of the poem, and the third of a series of comments on the ideas behind poems in Poems About Love.
Here I comment on the second part of the poem.
When push comes to shove
marriage is not about love.
And a wedding
is not “the happy ending”.
It is the beginning
of a long journey
with a contract to travel for the rest of your life
with someone you hardly know
by a route and towards a destination
that no-one knows.
2004 and 1 January 2023
Behind many poems in Poems about love lie events that set me thinking.
I discussed the opening of this poem in an earlier post.
Marriage – comment 2
Of course, every mature person knows that “a wedding is not the happy ending”.
Yet weddings are so often treated as an end-of-story event, the culmination of years of hope and striving, a glorious achievement to be celebrated with no expense spared, as if the wedding is the real life fairy tale come true and the beaming couple will “live together,happy ever after”.
Most marriages are of relatively young people (under 35?) with little experience of life. It struck me that the marriage commitment was the greatest undertaking two people might ever make in their lives, yet their knowledge of each other, the world, how they and the world might change in the future was very slight.
Weddings, therefore, are the beginnings of very risky enterprises.
So it surprises me that so many marriages can be described as happy or successful.
The poem raises the very important question of what does a happy marriage depend on in the face of so many unknowns?
Those marriages that are successful can’t put it all down to the common explanation that it was “luck”.
Although, having good health, having a good and reliable income, and living in a safe and prospering country – much of which is beyond personal control – is certainly a kind of luck that helps towards a happy marriage and a happy life.
What does it takes to make a marriage work? What is needed beyond a mutual attraction, mutual desire, “being in love”?
It would be interesting to compile a list of readers’ ideas.
One suggestion is that having a common interest is often a key factor, but in our village there is a woman, Bryony Hill, who was married to the famous football player and pundit, Jimmy Hill. She hated football. Her theory about their very happy relationship was that they got on so well together “because we were so different.”
I’d be interested to hear your view on this topic? You can comment either on facebook or my blog.
FACEBOOK LINK
Read all the poems
You can read all the poems in the book by buying or downloading it on Amazon. LINK.If you get the book please give it a star rating. I’d love some feedback so I’d really welcome comments on the book.
More comments and background and poems to follow in future blog articles.
I believe that many people may find a lot to relate to, argue about and be moved or amused by in my new book.
Poems about love, How could you know? has just been published by Amazon. It’s available as an ebook kindle download, or as a 100 page paperback.
How do I know?
I’ve been people-watching all my life, starting with my parents’ own troubled marriage. Looking through folders of poems I had scribbled over a lifetime, I discovered that I’d written rather a lot about love, and maybe at my age I have a few insights into the topic.
A few of the poems were written over fifty years ago but most were written in the last 20 years as I observed many relationships, their difficulties, tragedies, successes and triumphs, so this is largely a book of observations, but also speculation, imagination and a little bit of personal experience.
It’s a very varied and unusual book of love poetry because it goes beyond the normal kind of love poem. Some poems are thoughtful, even complicated and philosophical, others are lighter – suggestive or facetious with one or two that are surreal, or even bizarre.
How could you know? is the title of one of the poems, and if people ask how I might know so much about love to be able to write a book of love poems I have to say that like most other ordinary people I’m just an observer of life, fascinated by what is going on in the world and add this to my awareness of my own experiences.
I may have seen more than many people because I’m 80 years old, but these poems were written over a long period of time so they are not all written with the alleged wisdom of old age.
I have been married for over 50 years and live with my wife, Julie, in Hurstpierpoint, UK.
Poems include, Fifty kinds of love, [and I’m hoping readers will think of many more to add to the list], Love is its own reward, Does love exist? How could you know? Don’t vanish with the dawn, A heart in winter.
A new departure for me
I’ve spent over 25 years as an editor and publisher of war poetry so I am very pleased to have change and take on a topic that is positive and cheering. I hope readers will enjoy these very varied poems and leave comments on the Amazon website.
Finding on Amazon
You can visit the books entry on the Amazon website by clicking here.
Or search on Amazon for “Love poetry David Roberts”
My books (books I have edited) are primarily books of war poetry (mainly the First World War) and remembrance poems.
I also run a very popular war poetry website www.warpoetry.uk
