Fifty-Two Names for Love

Margaret Atwood wrote, Eskimos 
have fifty-two names for snow, and
there ought to be as many names for love.

And I wonder, what would be 
the names for love? Would they be 
sensual? forgiving? fierce? inspiring?

Would love be in fact like snow,
packed and wet and slick and
bright-- or dry as dust and random,
reluctant to be rolled into a form?

Is love like a blizzard, blinding everyone
to everything except itself? Or like a surprise
in late March, an early April
fool falling into the magnolia, melting
into the blossom, held like drops of dew
on morning webs glistening attraction?

And what about the avalanche? The love that buries
everyone along its path? Or the icy hillside
where love’s exhilaration speeds to brinks
of ecstasy and perches, decisively,
or plunges into free falls
of commitment?

Have you, like me, secretly believed
the first snowfall every winter, a blanket
glowing iridescent opulence in moonlight,
whispers heart songs of the stars in silver hushes
soft as eyelashes and thistledown that shimmers,

and every day and every month the snow
like love it deepens, falling on itself
in layers, conversations of a season
finding meaning in the words?

Is love the vulnerability of thaw, the stream
that comes to life beneath the ice and
shares a mutuality with mud
and snow and straw?

Is love the catalyst, the chemistry, the coaxing
and the pulse that blooms the crocus in the snow,
pushes green through frozen ground, through leaf mulch
and decay to bring a color and a texture and a rhythm to the day?

Perhaps the names for love are simply summed kaleidoscopic
as every single snowflake
falling gently on the tongue.


--written by Diana Tigerlily, January 24, 2008