I Request Of Love Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

Love, sweet love, what are you really for?
Do you come from the depths to ease despair
or were you all the while lingering there,
inside, waiting to spring through the door?

Love, sweet love, how glitters your sail
set freely to navigate the heart of me,
to make a promise, a hope, yet to be,
the bittersweet song of the nightingale?

Love, sweet love, are you the summer dawn
that surrounds the blue zenith of the mount,
that sparkles the water from the fount.
Are you the one that saunters across the lawn?

Love, sweet love, why sometimes do you cower,
obscured beneath dark shadows, pain and gloom,
hiding behind cob-webbed bookshelves in the room,
and defending yourself against your own great power?

Love, sweet love, why do you always run away
to hide yourself and pretend you don't exist?
You must know how dearly you are missed
so why, why, why do you treat me this way?

Love, sweet love, I find you ever a part of me.
You are my loving speech, every word and deed.
You are the heart of me, my want and need.
You are my tenderness, my reason to be.

Love, sweet love, you make me whole
and you illume the darkness within my soul.