Author's note: The following is a poem dedicated to my wife and the love we are growing together. Discovering love is discovering ourselves, a process as scientific as it is spiritual.

Pursuits in both these dimensions require the same underlying qualities -- persistence and determination. The journey means hacking through the thickets until we discover what was always there -- the truth.
How can we appreciate this journey if we've never experienced the struggle to get there? Yet our consumer society, uniquely American, preaches instant gratification, that nothing should be beyond our reach and that everything should be within our grasp. With this insatiable appetite for material satisfaction, we become addicted, and our soul loses its taste for life and inevitably starves.



My hope is to reverse that trend, both through my career (that of a labor organizer for the Service Employees International Union) and through my other passions, poetry being one of them. Fortunately, I'm part of a movement of millions (my rough estimate) all dedicated to love of humankind, and so I'm

in a unique position as a poet -- I write as I live. This poem is one of my roughest, and at times, felt like an unfinished sculpture, full of jagged edges and dull finishes. But then I looked more closely, and I focused and concentrated, and I smiled. This poem wasn't meant to be enjoyed by those that could only see the surface level beauty in things; this poem wasn't meant for those that required the finished product assembled at no cost to them; this poem wasn't meant for those unwilling to create and dream and transform.



It was meant for those willing to finish the sculpture. And enable the beauty that their eye beheld.

› To Cynthia 

Heart Burst



What am I scared to write about today?



Let me whisper it into the wind

Let me yell it into a cave

Let me be silent





and reflect

upon love



its meaning and depth

love almost -- no no --

absolutely is

paradoxical

and in this way

empirical

universal

eternal

as say, the wave-particle duality

of physics.



Now I'm rambling



B          r         e         a         t         h         e



An action

and an emotion

One

tangible

demonstrable

physical



The other

ephemeral, simply,



a feeling



Can one exist without the other?

Action

without

emotion?



Can you care and not show it?

What is the worth of such a thought?



B          r         e         a         t         h         e



to know

and not

act

is to not know

(--an old friend from ucla quoting confucius incorrectly?)



My fear lays down its last shield --

the idlings of a rambler.

And love makes its final thrust

vanquishing my fear

allowing my heart to burst

in ecstasy

For I can now tell you one of the

secrets

of existence

of love.

And one last rambling if you please.



Love uttered and revered by

two beings profoundly strange to

one another is an expression

of the infinite of existence.



Love is

Love is



pushing someone to their full potential.

okay

maybe not so profound?

but ponder...

how effective can we be?

how righteous?

how justified?



When we ourselves put up a wall.

Surrounded by barbed wire.

Enclosed by a ditch,

full of crocodiles of cunning,

Who callously

cut down

your calling me out.



Not to hate on me.

Not to berate me (well perhaps, ok, so

why not if I'm at fault?)



But to break me

of my bad habits

my weaknesses. My inability to realize

my strengths until you

laid a bridge

from my potential

to my actual

and as I cross

I see that

that chasm

I so feared

that divide I so dreaded

was a mere figment

of an imagination

run wild with ego

and disdain

regret and

rejection.



And so in retrospect

we realize

the bridge unnecessary

a mere feather

in our cap

the security blanket

when stick your head

out

it's a mild 72 with

plenty of sunshine

and a pleasant breeze



B          r         e         a         t         h         e



So that is love

the ability to push

and be pushed

Because otherwise

you are perfect



and what wisdom could you

glean from your significant other?

But okay,

if you are so wise?

the owl of her/his eye?

Oh wise one

will away his/her worries!

will away her/his fears!

will away his/her anxieties!



Oh word?



You can't simply will them away?

perhaps unwise you were

to unconscionably

utter

such arrogant

ideas with

undertones

of untowardness.



Take heed and

don't lose respect for the

one that loves you.

For without that person,

That soul . . .

who are you?



An individual alone.

attached to no one

the collectivity of mankind

reduced to a theory

with no practical application

to you.



So now I have shouted

into a megaphone.

So no I have lit the pyres

from the highest peaks.

So now I have affirmed

my very existence.

And luck you, by golly,

to be reading this

and

thereby

connected to

me.



Of course

lucky me

to be able to

share this with

you.



So go love and be loved.

Be one with humankind.

Be the wave

and the particle.

The emotion

and the action.



B          r         e         a         t         h         e





Put down your shield.

Let your fear leave your body.

And absorb the spear of love as it invades your veins and encompasses your soul.



Let

your

heart

burst.