Love is...

As a part of National Poetry Month festivities, I'm using my blog to participate in the first national Poem In Your Pocket Day. The point is for the participants to share their favorite poems - preferably a pocket sized one. I love poetry and I love sharing things that I love - so I'm gonna share two of my favorites with you (though admittedly one is not as pocket sized as the other).

What Love Is Like

Love is like
a pineapple,
sweet and
undefinable.

- Piet Hein

--

Coal

I
is the total black, being spoken
from the earth's inside.
There are many kinds of open
how a diamond comes into a knot of flame
how sound comes into a words, coloured
by who pays what for speaking.

Some words are open like a diamond
on glass windows
singing out within the crash of sun
Then there are words like stapled wagers
in a perforated book - buy and sign and tear apart -
and come whatever will all chances
the stub remains
an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.
Some words live in my throat
breeding like adders. Other know sun
seeking like gypsies over my tongue
to explode through my lips
like young sparrows bursting from shell.
Some words
bedevil me

Love is word, another kind of open.
As the diamond comes into a knot of flame
I am Black because I come from the earth's inside
Now take my word for jewel in the open light.

- Audre Lorde


What do you think it says about me that two of my favorite poems just happen to be about love? Would you say that these poems are speaking about the same sort of love?

(Things like this make me miss being an English major - and make me wonder why I'm in law school.)