THE WHOLE PERSON CALENDAR / FEBRUARY 2012

“How Do I Love Thee?” asked Elizabeth Barrett Brown-ing, then answered her own question, “Let Me Count the Ways,” in the title of her poem to her lover, the poet Robert Browning. That’s the way poets talk when they talk of love. To simply say to the Best Beloved, “I love you,” reveals a lack of imagination. On Valentine’s Day, when amorous thoughts seek significance in words, a meta-phor can come in real handy. Lovers turn their sunflower faces to follow the sun, reaching for meaning in the vast blue heavens. Or at least for something eloquent to write on a valentine.

Lovers must define the subtle varieties of love, enumerate its many splendors, and employ a metaphor or two in order to seal the deal on the wheel of love’s fortune. Love has many names. Some call it chocolate. “If the world was crazy, you know what I’d wear? / A chocolate suit and a tie of éclair ,” wrote Shel Silverstein in his poem, “If the World Was Crazy.” Chocolate, bitter in its natural state comes close to being an aphrodisiac when sweetened with sugar (alchemy is a metaphor for the creative process). As proof of the power of both chocolate and metaphor, I offer as an example Beatrice Wood, an Ojai artist who lived to be 105. She attributed her long life to the love of both young men and chocolate.

...That the chocolate cat is at once all agog, As her swelling proportions attest. And the chocolate cat goes cavorting around From this leafy limb unto that, And the sugar-plums tumble, of course, to the ground— Hurrah for that chocolate cat! by Eugene Field from “The Sugarplum Tree.”

Love is so versatile; I can love dark chocolate and my kitten with equal ardor. That one is edible and the other pet-able just demonstrates the elasticity of love. I also love “A Red, Red Rose” as Scottish poet Robert Burns does, although he had a simile feeling about roses, not firmly metaphorical. Burns wrote: “O my luve’s like a red, red rose,” which sounds a bit waffley. Not a secure metaphor at all. May Swenson, however, is quite sure about roses. In her poem “Blue,” she writes: “Blue, but you are Rose, too, /and buttermilk, but with blood / dots showing through.” Although, Gertrude Stein would say, “A Rose is a Rose is a Rose.” In Carl Sandburg’s “Little Bird,” the poet views the rose in another metaphorical light:

And are they after beguiling and befoozling uswhen they tell us love is a rose, a red red rose,the mystery of leaves folded over and underand you can take it to pieces and throw it awayor you can wear it for a soft spot of crimsonin your hair, at your breast,and you can waltz and tango wearing your sweet crimson roseand take it home and lay it on a window sill and see ituntil one day you’re not carefuland it crackles into dust in your hand

and the wind whisks it whither you know not,whither you care not

Yes, that is another color of rose.

Love, that “little word” as Sandburg calls it. There is so much to love! We love our family and friends and that particular shade of blue where the Pacific meets the horizon at sunset. We love iPads and kneepads and crash pads when we’re on the road again. (But shoulder pads are out. We don’t love the ‘80s any more.) We love God and our country and red sports cars with German engines. We don’t love mean people, mean people suck. We love our troops, but don’t love war, because war is hell. We love Mom and apple pie and rock ‘n roll until the day we die.

I NY, but I left my heart in San Francisco. The heart is a lonely hunter in the heart of darkness where the ministry of the heart tells the truth, cross-my-heart and hope to spit. In the heart of America you can hear voices of the heart drumming heart-felt thanks for all

the fish.

Yet, when our Best Beloved whispers, “I love you,” in that simple unimaginative way, unadorned by metaphor or simile, our sympathetic system murmurs in response.

In her poem, “Waking a Lover,” Ojai poet Mary Natwick writes, “when you wake / someone you love / a little early / because you want to show them something / special / and you touch them on the shoulder and sing, hey you, hey you / that’s what this bird sounds / like / now / at dawn / coaxing the world to wake.”

Love is a simple word that cannot be translated or satisfactorily explained. This elastic, little word that lists our preferences as loves is larger that anything imaginable. A rush of feeling seeks its center. Love is the metaphor for all of this.

What do we leave, living like a nestof surly birds, alive, among the thicketsor static, perched on the frigid cliffs?So then, if living was nothing more than anticipatingthe earth, this soil and its harshness,deliver me, my love, from not doing my duty, and help mereturn to my place beneath the hungry earth —Pablo Neruda, from “Love for this Book.”

Tree Bernstein writes Ask Ms. Metaphor, a practical poetic advice column for everyday use. Ask Ms. Metaphor and she will consult with the poets for answers to your questions on love, manners, vitality, work, gardening, and everything else. Email a question to: askmsmetaphor.com. Full content of poems quoted can be accessed at poems.org. Mary Natwick’s poem,“Waking a Lover,” from her collection by the same title, printed in its entirety by permission. Published by Spoken Incense Press, Ojai, California, 2011.Illustration by Cynthia Waring Matthews / www.ancestorwork.com

When our

Best Beloved whispers, “I love you,”

in that simple unimaginative way,

unadorned by metaphor or simile, our sympathetic system murmurs in response.

After Beguiling & Befoozling Us — Meaning in Metaphor & the Language of Love

by Tree Bernstein

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