Flower for the Day Rosemary II 12-1-25

LoveSpell: Against Endings 

All the endings in my life  rise up against me  like that sea of troubles  Shakespeare mixed  with metaphors;  like Vikings in their boats  singing Wagner,  like witches  burning at  the stake--  I submit  to my fate.    I know beginnings,  their sweetnesses,  and endings,  their bitternesses--  but I do not know  continuance--  I do not know  the sweet demi-boredom  of life as it lingers,  of man and wife  regarding each other  across a table of shared witnesses,  of the hand-in-hand dreams  of those who have slept  a half-century together  in a bed so used and familiar  it is rutted  with love.    I would know that  before this life closes,  a soulmate to share my roses--  I would make a spell  with long grey beard hairs  and powdered rosemary and rue,  with the jacket of a tux  for a tall man  with broad shoulders,  who loves to dance;  with one blue contact lens  for his bluest eyes;  with honey in a jar  for his love of me;  with salt in a dish  for his love of sex and skin;  with crushed rose petals  for our bed;  with tubes of cerulean blue  and vermilion and rose madder  for his artist's eye;  with a dented Land-Rover fender  for his love of travel;  with a poem by Blake  for his love of innocence  revealed by experience;  with soft rain  and a bare head;  with hand-in-hand dreams on Mondays  and the land of fuck  on Sundays;  with mangoes, papayas  and limes,  and a house towering  above the sea.    Muse, I surrender  to thee.  Thy will be done,  not mine.    If this love spell  pleases you,  send me this lover,  this husband,  this dancing partner  for my empty bed  and let him fill me  from now  until I die.  I offer my bones,  my poems,  my luck with roses,  and the secret garden  I have found  walled in my center,  and the sunflower  who raises her head  despite her heavy seeds.    I am ready now, Muse,  to serve you faithfully  even with  a graceful dancing partner--  for I have learned  to stand alone.    Give me your blessing.  Let the next  epithalamion* I write  be my own.  And let it last  more than the years  of my life--  and without the least  strain--  two lovers bareheaded  in a summer rain.

Erica Jong

*'epithalamion' -  a song celebrating a marriage