Living Tree Poetry

But I love,
and I know you never said
I couldn’t,

that you made this heart
a beating organ.

But I love,
and didn’t know that
in the loving was the learning

of what love means
and what it doesn’t.


I love,
and I know you never said
I couldn’t,

that you made this heart
a vessel pouring.

But I love,
and didn’t know that
in the loving was a grief

for what love can keep,
and what it can’t.


I love,
and I know that you never meant
for me not to be,

a heart beating,
a vessel pouring.

But I love,
and didn’t know that
love would teach me

to the degrees it crushed,
asked I bled.


That to be a an organ beating,
a heart pouring
itself out,

I had to know what it meant
to give and not be fed.

That to love
was more like the fountain springing
from the deep mountain source,

it didn’t need the one it watered
to be anything other

than loved.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
August 2020