The Wildest Word
The Benedictines had it, they knew
the joys of silence, the illuminating of
manuscripts, the careful diffusion of
esoteria.
The pleasures of abstinence.
Get to a point where you can deny yourself anything
and then you are halfway there, some say.
And poems are made
of love not made.
Emily Dickinson refused
the offered touch and reveled in her own
self abnegation. "The wildest word
consigned to man is No," she wrote.
"You love me best when I refuse."
"Imagined love is better than the real,
and occupies the highest branch of Eden's tree,"
wrote Edna St. Vincent Millay.
"Like fallen fruit, lived love is cheap."
— June Robertson Beisch
from Fatherless Woman.© Cape Cod Literary Press.
One needs a revolution
every few years, and in my circumstances this seemed heaven-sent.
Love/Life Poems
