A Love Poem

Song of Solomon style

Hello, Poetry Friend

[The following is from the introduction to my new poetry collection, Love & other Mysteries, along with one of my Song of Solomon poems.]

“Whither has your beloved gone,” says Song of Solomon 6:1. There’s more to the verse, but I like ending it there, with a comma. The unendedness leaves room.

I’ve loved Song of Solomon since I was far too young for it. It always causes faith to rise in me. I am not a scholar, but a poet. When something moves me—a bird, a wildflower, a storm—I can’t help but write a poem in response. I began wanting to poem my way through Song of Solomon after those days around the fountain, after I began praying the rosary myself, using a booklet published by the Knights of Columbus called A Scriptural Rosary for the Family. It’s full of verses from Songs. I began writing love poems while reading Song of Solomon during a snowy retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, visiting family.

Love is my grand conclusion from spilling pencil lead over the Canticle of Canticles. Shouldn’t my takeaway from this ancient, erotic text be more theologically pure, less Juliet-esque? It is not.

I am far too old to seek this Lover now, like a bird I can’t quite reach. Song of Solomon would use the image of a dove; I prefer a cardinal. A flash of red, whistling. Unwilling to leave me alone. Daring me to write my loves and mysteries into poems. Perhaps there is nothing more theological than eros.

My eight Songs poems, one for each chapter from Song of Solomon, form the backbone of this collection. The others are arranged according to the traditional Mysteries of the rosary. The Mystery and one of its fruits is listed at the beginning of each section. Those fruits are hiding in the text, waiting for you to seek them.

-from “Beads, Songs, Poems, and Birds”

My poem from Songs 7 is titled “Love Plant,” and it also goes with the fourth Glorious Mystery, the Assumption.

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