Love's Ebb and Tide

Most analogies for love fall short because of our refusal to consider its definition outside our narcissism.

Love’s Ebb and Tide
             by Odin Roark

One never picks a tide’s movement
Forces outside one’s mere wishes
Answer to only that which stays
Beneath the surface of our eyes
Allowing this habit of nature
To reign free of man’s control

Even so

We oft times try to emulate nature
But as a species capable of choice
We chance to choose rightly
And wrongly

When the ocean’s force appears
Its shoreline unknown
The energy’s roil considers
To lay back
Or plunge ahead

So too proceeds most relationship decisions
To risk another rocky shore
Or skirt the obstructions
Find smooth grounding
So often guised as safe haven

Yet

Jungle laden danger
Often lurks once ashore

To know of harmony
Emotion often seeks waves fully spent
Where energy’s current willingly gives pause
Affording lapping repose as a cradling comfort
While knowing full well
Keeping control is only nature’s to have
To give

Yet love
Like a weathered pier
Knows of such challenges
Fully aware
Erosion is inevitable
Even as truth’s layered protection
Awaits its timed revelation

Underpinnings’ deeply buried security
Patiently abides its day to reveal
Life’s unification
Only known by ebb’s gentility
Tide’s warrior strength
And the mutual respect
Shared with shore’s embrace

Such a oneness few experience
Even fewer allow the tide its freedom
To be all its genderless wisdom needs
Accepting no ownership
Lease
Or confinement

Such is volition’s character
Devotion’s simple honesty
An open heart’s willingness