a valentine hangover

"To The Man I Married"
by Angela Manalang-Gloria

I. You are my earth and all that earth implies
the gravity that ballasts me in space,
the air I breathe, the land that stills my cries
for food and shelter against devouring days
You are the earth whose orbit marks my way
and sets my North, my South, my East, my West,
You are the final elemental clay the driven heart must turn to for its rest.

If in your arms that hold me now so near
I lift my keening thoughts to another one,
as trees long rooted to the earth uprear
their quickening leaves and flowers to the sun
You, who are earth, o never doubt that I
need you no less because I need the sky.

II. I cannot love you with a love
that outcompares the boundless sea
for that were false, as no such love
and no such ocean can ever be

But I can love you with a love
as finite as the wave that dies
and dying holds from crest to crest
the blue of everlasting skies.


this poem was required reading for my Comm 10 (advanced college writing ata ang course name). from the moment i have read it and each time i get the chance to read the poem, i always feel a stirring of emotions which have since then varied from longing and craving to have such a man in my life to the more intense feeling of gratefulness as well as bliss at having such a man in my life and in knowing that indeed, he is the one i intend to marry (all in good and in God's time).

hay valentine's, i am rendered oh so mushy. tch.