These I Have Loved

These I Have Loved

These I have loved.

The first impossible sentence that looked back at me

and recognized its accomplice.

Libraries, where silence shelved revolutions

between cracked bindings,

where dust was merely the pollen of forgotten gods,

where every overdue book proved that time,

like language, can be negotiated.

Ink on my fingers,

the blue bruises of apprenticeship.

Bars with chipped mahogany elbows,

where whiskey translated grief

into every available dialect,

where laughter arrived wearing a black eye,

where lonely men polished the same story

until it reflected someone they almost became.

The miraculous commerce of tending thirst,

where I learned that every glass

is a tiny cathedral of confession,

and the best tip

is the stranger who leaves lighter

than when he staggered in.

Women.

Lord, the bright republic of women.

Women who arrived like weather systems,

who could rewrite gravity with a glance,

whose laughter struck matches in rain,

whose kindness could sand the sharp edges

from a week built entirely of Mondays.

Women whose mouths were dictionaries

where I willingly mispronounced forever.

The tangled arithmetic of desire,

where subtraction somehow multiplied joy,

where bodies argued in fluent idiom,

where every button became

a persuasive philosopher.

I have loved making glorious mistakes

for magnificent reasons.

I have loved being spectacularly wrong

about almost everything important,

because wisdom is merely arrogance

after enough collisions.

I have loved poems

that refused to sit quietly on the page,

poems with dirt beneath their fingernails,

poems that smelled faintly of coffee,

cigarette smoke,

cheap perfume,

rainwater,

and redemption trying on work boots.

Metaphors that stole hubcaps.

Similes that picked pockets.

Puns so shameless

they grinned while escaping through the back door.

I have loved words

that carried switchblades in their socks,

and words that baked casseroles

for grieving neighbors.

The English language,

that glorious mutt,

forever chasing Latin bicycles,

borrowing French cologne,

drinking Irish courage,

borrowing Yiddish shoulders to shrug upon,

forever stealing tomorrow's slang

before today has finished inventing it.

I have loved children,

particularly the two who promoted me

from dreamer to father.

The impossible privilege

of watching another human being

become entirely themselves.

Sticky hands.

School concerts.

Questions with no ceiling.

The astonishing fact

that love can leave home

and still somehow occupy every room.

I have loved old friends

who know precisely where the bodies are buried,

mostly because they helped me bury them,

then laughed until sunrise

at the funeral of our better judgment.

I have loved conversations

that wandered so far from their beginning

they returned wearing different hats.

Bookstores.

Baseball.

Autumn.

Good coffee.

Bad diners.

Excellent pie.

Secondhand record shops.

Handwritten letters.

Fresh notebooks.

Ancient trees.

The smell of rain rehearsing on hot pavement.

The first snowfall,

when the whole world briefly agrees

to lower its voice.

I have loved teachers

who handed me questions

instead of answers,

knowing curiosity

earns better interest.

I have loved my many failures, eventually,

though never on speaking terms.

I have loved applause

and survived its addiction.

I have loved obscurity

and found it surprisingly spacious.

I have loved growing up dirt poor,

once memory paid the bill.

I have loved the stubborn dignity

of making art

that refuses to calculate its own market value.

I have loved people

who carried invisible weather,

who smiled with cracked windows,

who fought dragons

that looked suspiciously like a work day.

I have loved forgiveness,

that locksmith of impossible doors.

I have loved becoming older,

against the loud objections

of a culture forever trying

to sell youth like it invented breathing.

Sixty plus years.

A sentence with many commas,

few periods,

and enough parentheses

to shelter every version of myself

that somehow survived the editing.

These I have loved.

Not perfectly.

Not wisely.

Not always in the correct order.

But extravagantly.

Like a man who finally discovered

that the opposite of dying is not living.

It is paying exquisite attention.

I love to pay attention, 

and  if my pockets are nearly empty when I arrive

at whatever final customs house awaits,

I hope they still discover a loose button,

three astonishing metaphors,

a bartender's pencil,

a child's drawing,

a lover's laughter folded into a receipt,

and enough gratitude to declare honestly:

nothing here is contraband.

I was trying to bring

the whole beautiful world

back home.

All these have been my loves.

-----

This post was inspired by a DVerse Poets Pub Prompt in salute to Rupert Brooke, specifically the second stanza of 'The Great Lover' in which he lists the many things he loves.

©2026 Christopher Reilley 

 

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