Temple On My Knees

As Valentine’s Day comes to a close, Lifetime Learning shares a final poem, “Temple On My Knees,” by Lisa Russ Spaar, Professor and Director of Creative Writing and Director, Area Program in Poetry Writing in the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. Ms. Spaar is the author of twelve books of poetry, the most recent of which is Orexia (2017).

Temple On My Knees

When this day returns to me
I will value your heart,
long hurt in long division,
over mine. Mouth above mine too —
say you love me, truth never more
meant, say you are angry.
Words, words we net with our mouths.
Soul is an old thirst but not as first
as the body’s perhaps,
though on bad nights its melancholy
eats us out, to a person.
True, time is undigressing.
Yet true is all we can be:
rhyming you, rhyming me.

(c) Lisa Russ Spaar. This poem first appeared in OREXIA (Persea Books, 2017).