Wandering

By Kenneth Koch (my new favorite love poet…actually, I don’t really have an old favorite…take note of the concrete language; also pay attention to the use of movement- wind, swims, bicycling, sidewalk, sails – to illustrate the energy that loves creates and and what it requires to be sustained. The poet is anything but still when thinking of his love. He is anything but bored. He is part of a mystery. He is drawn away from the familiar, away from himself.)

I love you as a sheriff searches for a walnut

That will solve a murder case unsolved for years 

Because the murderer left it in the snow beside a window

Through which he saw her head, connecting with

Her shoulders by a neck, and laid a red

Roof in her heart. For this we live a thousand years;

For this we love, and we live because we love, we are not 

Inside a bottle, thank goodness! I love you as a

Kid searches for a goat; I am crazier than shirttails

In the wind, when you’re near, a wind that blows from

That big blue sea, so shiny so deep and so unlike us;

I think I am bicycling across an Africa of green and white fields

Always, to be near you, even in my heart

When I’m awake, which swims, and also I believe that you

Are trustworthy as the sidewalk which leads me to

The place where I again think of you, a new

Harmony of thoughts! I love you as the sunlight leads the prow

Of a ship which sails

From Hartford to Miami, and I love you 

Best at dawn, when even before I am awake the sun

Receives me in the questions which you always pose.