Love, so challenged, no inner conflict wins.
As a partner of peace love wages war
on itself. Off-set, love’s giddy-heart spins;
and so forsaken, loses sight of sure.
In conflict with its own best interest
love brokers treaties never to be sealed;
love enters into contracts that at best
record the battles fought upon a field
of unbound, unfound, unwound agreements
that soon form a quarry of love’s dispute.
The rumoured whispers, the lost endearments
stripped of meaning and purposeful pursuit.
. When tit meets tat, love declares a battle.
. What gains love from this quarrelsome prattle?

© Tim Grace, 3 September 2011

To the reader: As a partner of peace, in the orchestration of harmonic waves, love is prone to self-doubt. To resolve its off-key insecurities, love seeks reassurance; constantly calibrating its pitch and frequency. Love is prone to high peaks of ecstasy and low pits of depression; vacillating between major and minor keys. Harmony requires an oscillating not vacillating partnership; good vibrations that intermingle as one resounding chord.

To the poet: Love is the greatest of all abstract nouns. An intangible force that has had poets spellbound since first the word was uttered; stuttered in association with its tangible sensations. As a rhyming partner, Love has outlived its obvious relationships. The dove, that bird of peace, has long since flown its roost; likewise the velvet glove has outworn its soft semantic touch.

partner of peace