Love by Finbar Lennon


Love
by Finbar Lennon

Love, impossible dream, impossible word,
Soft embrace with a double hand
Absent blink for pupils wide with wonder
First sight and all defences down
Instinctive hold on sounds and senses
For each to notice interest and respond;
Does it ever happen quite this way?

Somewhere amidst their frantic schedules
Trying to make ends meet in Tinseltown
Believing the effort to remain afloat
Is worth the toll and toil it wrought
Or sometimes simply sitting on easy chairs
Content together on solitary manoeuvres;
Does it ever happen quite this way?

The word is peddled to extinction
And yet retains its native card by heart
Hankering for truth to make it last
No control to guide it into place
A glue to cut and paste and save
For home, away, together and apart;
Does it ever happen quite this way?

Staying as one until it’s over before
Returning again unsought to the other
During twilights and under passing clouds
Peeps out from nooks and crannies
Builds a listening post for memories
Catches unawares to test its provenance;
Does it ever happen quite this way?

Hear Finbar Lennon recite the poem on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast:

Seven Poems / Seven Poets (Olive Dwan / Crystal Mayo / Airea Johnson / Inge Sorensen / Linda McQuarrie-Bowerman / Ivy Raff / Finbar Lennon) Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast

Submit your polished poetry for the opportunity of being published on ViewlessWings.com and being interviewed on The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.

Finbar Lennon is a retired surgeon who graduated from University College Dublin in 1972. He co-authored a memoir with his late wife Doctor Kate McGarry, “The Heavens are all Blue” that was published by Hachette Ireland in April 2020. Since then he has had two collections of poetry published by Lapwing Publications in Belfast – “NOW” and “A Thimble on her Finger”. Some of his ‘teenage poems’ appear in the memoir. He returned to composing poems after his wife died. Finbar lives in a small village in County Louth and continues to teach undergraduate medical students in his alma mater.

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