Age of Love

The older I get the less I get emotional
about things that used to work me up.

Politics, writing theory, sports, right & wrong,
even old God.

I don't know if it's a matter of diminishing energy,
or not caring enough to want to argue, or just what
happens when you get on.

It doesn't feel bad, I'm not complaining in the
least. I don't even really feel much of a need
to understand it beyond just noticing.

Still, you want to tell what it is, so you look
for words that mosey around whatever it is, where
it came from. what it's like, how you feel about it.

What does get me feeling alive still, or more,
is the feeling of love for other people. A feeling
like finally being a part of whatever it is that's
going on, that matters, that lasts, that's real.

I don't love everybody all the time or anything,
or anything even near that. I don't seem to have
much control over it, over that quiet passion of
longing for others, like a contemplative passsion,
to feel and show that emotional loss of control
over the normal way or living & moving around &
listening & seeing.

It's the thing that where you're listening to somebody
& suddenly you see them & understand & love them
deeply, almost painfully, and it doesn't have
even anything to do with what they're saying, and
you wonder what took you so long, and that's all right
too.

I'm more likely to feel it more when I've been
meditating, oddly, or gardening, or writing--those
things I do that center and calm me.

So I'm more likely to lose control (to the point of
weeping a little, or feeling like weeping) when I've
been doing things that seemingly quiet myself, my
emotions.

But there's no rule to it, because I'm also vulnerable
to this generalized people-love-overwhelm when my sleep
cycle's messed up, when I'm exhausted.

Music will set it off, just listened to Dylan (the old
Restless Farewell, the new Workingman's Blues). The time
of peace after a couple hours in the garden, that'll open
my heart, too. A good meeting, with laughter & honesty.

I don't know what it is. I don't miss giving up so much
arguing, or letting it go, or realizing it's going
whether I want to let it go or not. "The minute I stopped
arguing I could begin to see and feel."

Thinking of the battles I've had with people, with women,
with men, I feel just a trace of sorrow & then a gentle
flood of understanding and forgiveness and connection at
some level, in some element way inside, like spiritual
x-ray vision.

I spent a lot of time not being with people, even when
I was with them. Though I do spend more time with people,
it's not always easy. I'm still ambivalent about other
folks still sometimes. But there's a land under me, under
the land I'm standing on, that's coming up that's
undeniable, and it's something to do with love.

Not that I understand love, or have it down, or know all
its faces & names, which are many. I could get up from here
and somebody could cross me & the worst could come up in me
just like that again. But not for long, or with the urgency
of before, and easier to see through & let go.

But overall, there's something going on & I don't mind it
at all, nor that it took so long to get to me, or me to
it.