Love Poem: Musing Lately
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Written by: Sally Eslinger

Musing Lately

Musing Lately

Let’s just say
with my husband now having heart troubles and my 
being old (& bedridden while waiting for my new prosthetic-leg) makes for on-going thinking, remembering, observing, reflecting, tentatively concluding, believing
how the ineffable ultimately rules…and one’s

language (for all its commanding need to be used with a true Love )  finds                                                                                                                                        w
                                             o
                                                    r
                                                          d
                                                        s

to be less than their expressive task                 f           
                                                                      a
                                                                       i 
                                                                        l
   (despite even some                                       i
    divine inspiration)                                     
                                                                        n 
                                                                            g  
to cast some light brighter
than the humble votive’s flame flickering in the heart —
Or more than the one tear — felt but unseen' — in the corner of the eye, bringing along its cathartic story …ready to  fall down over the cheek…
Or to realize  (especially after 40 years togerther) that devotion lives well beyond a 3-word statement  in heights carried there by a tried, spiritual touching of our auras in the room: lives aligned for better or worse in the profound music that our closeness creates.  The poems are born in being or feeling before the written.



(c) sally young eslinger 7/13/24**    
In my youth, i was a devotee of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. (Beckett even sent me a hand-written letter in response to one i sent him.). I pretty much memorized “Waiting for Godot.”  Joyce and Beckett both saw words dissolving — into the ineffable.  Some powerful poems lead us there, but that there, I’ve found is in the unspeakable.