What are favorite short(ish) non-cheesy poems about love?

January 9, 2025 5:56 PM

I am looking for poems about all kinds of love -- romantic, sexual, platonic, familiar, friendly, whatever -- that aren't too long. Some sentiment is OK but nothing obvious. I like conflict or poetry that understands that love isn't always perfect.

I'm looking for ideas for Valentine's Day cards, which I do instead of Christmas/holiday cards. I don't necessarily need one true poem but a few to suit several relationships would be great.

posted by edencosmic to Media & Arts (12 answers total)

My favorite short love poem is:

I wish I were close
To you as the wet skirt of
A salt girl to her body.
I think of you always.

I forget the author but if you want, I can find it tomorrow. I also quite like:

In the empty mountains
The leaves of the bamboo grass
Rustle in the wind,
I think of a girl
Who is not here.

They're both from 100 Poems from the Japanese, translated by Ken Rexroth.

Favorite longer love poem is Answer by Carol Ann Duffy:

If you were made of stone,
your kiss a fossil sealed up in your lips,
your eyes a sightless marble to my touch,
your grey hands pooling raindrops for the birds,
your long legs cold as rivers locked in ice,
if you were stone, if you were made of stone, yes, yes.

If you were made of fire,
your head a wild Medusa hissing flame,
your tongue a red-hot poker in your throat,
your heart a small coal glowing in your chest,
your fingers burning pungent brands on flesh,
if you were fire, if you were made of fire, yes, yes.

If you were made of water,
your voice a roaring, foaming waterfall,
your arms a whirlpool spinning me around,
your breast a deep, dark lake nursing the drowned,
your mouth an ocean, waves torn from your breath,
if you were water, if you were made of water, yes, yes.

If you were made of air,
your face empty and infinite as sky,
your words a wind with litter for its nouns,
your movements sudden gusts among the clouds,
your body only breeze against my dress,
if you were air, if you were made of air, yes, yes.

If you were made of air, if you were air,
if you were made of water, if you were water,
if you were made of fire, if you were fire,
if you were made of stone, if you were stone,
or if you were none of these, but really death,
the answer is yes, yes.
posted by dobbs at 6:06 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]

Love Is, Nikki Giovanni

You might find her book, Love Poems, worth checking out.
posted by EvaDestruction at 6:20 PM on January 9

I love Edna St Vincent Millay's Sonnet XXX:

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
posted by Jeanne at 6:28 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]

Don’t Hesitate - Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case.
Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.
posted by Iteki at 6:28 PM on January 9 [3 favorites]

Habitation by Margaret Atwood

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

the edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

the edge of the receding glacier

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire
posted by RGD at 6:49 PM on January 9 [3 favorites]

If you'll forgive some cliches:

Auden - The More Loving One
Cummings - I Like My Body When It Is With Your Body
Donne - A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
Dickinson - Wild Nights
posted by foursentences at 7:02 PM on January 9

Your Catfish Friend - Richard Brautigan

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, “It’s beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,”
I’d love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, “I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them.”
posted by Redstart at 7:03 PM on January 9 [5 favorites]

Good Bones is my favorite poem about family love.
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:38 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]

Margaret Atwood

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye
posted by VelveteenBabbitt at 8:16 PM on January 9

Less gruesomely, Separation by W.S. Merwyn.
posted by VelveteenBabbitt at 8:20 PM on January 9

"The Wild Rose" by Wendell Berry

Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart,

suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only shade,

and once more I am blessed, choosing
again what I chose before.
posted by Lemkin at 9:06 PM on January 9

Not poetry yet my favourite poetry are the lyrics of Joni Mitchell.
Example: A Case of You.
posted by 15L06 at 10:35 PM on January 9