A reminder about loving without attachment...

I love this poem...

Giant dandelion, summer 2010, Bend, OR...

To Have Without Holding ~ Marge Piercy

Learning to love differently is hard,

love with the hands wide open, love

with the doors banging on their hinges,

the cupboard unlocked, the wind

roaring and whimpering in the rooms

rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds

that thwack like rubber bands

in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open

stretching the muscles that feel

as if they are made of wet plaster,

then of blunt knives, then

of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes

of grab, of clutch; to love and let

go again and again  It pesters to remember

the lover who is not in the bed,

to hold back what is owed to the work

that gutters like a candle in a cave

without air, to love consciously,

conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can't do it, you say it's killing

me, but you thrive, you glow

on the street like a neon raspberry,

you float and sail, a helium ballon

bright bachelor's button blue and bobbing

on the cold and hot winds of our breath,

as we make and unmake in passionate 

diastole and systole the rhythm

of our unbound bonding, to have

and not hold, to love

with minimized malice, hunger

and anger moment by moment balanced.

~o~o~o~