“The Breeze of Romance”
Poems for Loving Couples
By: Mark Baird
Military Marriage Enrichment Weekend
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Author’s Note
I wrote these poems in the first few years, after Tori and I were married. Learning how to trust and love another person, my dear wife, was difficult for me. I had a lot of old bad habits and defenses that I had to let go of. And I needed to learn how to cherish the beautiful uniqueness of our union. I was such a mess. How could anyone possibly love me?
I was certain that Tori would wise up soon enough and leave me. But my wife showed me by her constant, enduring and resolute love that our marriage was forever. Since the beginning of our marriage until today, she has looked at me with her loving, deep brown eyes and said with absolute earnestness, “Mark, I love you right now more than anytime in my life until today.” Her love was so amazing. I came to completely believe and depend on it. Until then I had always doubted that God really loved me. But I knew that no human could possibly love more than the God who gave his son to die on the cross for me. And so, if Tori loved me even with all my faults, then God must surely love me too. And I am absolutely convinced that He brought us together so that I would know this.
The Bible says that women were created to help men. My wife has certainly helped me. I am a better person because of her. These poems are a testament to her.
Mark Baird
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To Tori:
My wife
My Muse
My Inspiration
These poems would have perished
Pent-up within me
If not for
Your liberating love.
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I shall never fill the world enough
With praises of my wife.
Like soft waltzes, I make my poetry sing
When writing these for her
And so I shall all of my life.
There are other issues, profound and pressing
Which deserve consideration and concern.
But nothing else stirs my soul with such passion
Nor makes my heart with fire burn.
It’s not just the curves of my woman
But also her countenance and soft eyes
That causes me to feel like some seagull
Carried by wind
Who over the oceans glides.
Yet, what she possesses
That is most precious and amazing
Is something my eyes cannot see:
More than all her feminine beauty
Exists her constant love for me.
Once I was unfaithful
Sneaky
Like a cat on the prowl
My moon-meows to women
Were all deceitful, false, and foul.
I could not resist the attraction
Of the female sexual form.
Responding to the purr of their invisible antennae
Like radar, was my norm.
But now I’ve ceased carousing.
I’m not the tomcat I was before.
Perhaps age has made me wiser;
But the reason is much more.
It never could have happened
Unless we had met by chance.
I still remember the very moment
Your figure held my glance.
You’ve turned me inside-out.
Tossed that feline out the door.
Now I’m in love
A new creation
Faithful to the core.
The boundaries of infinity
Are not beyond your heart.
Within your smile
The galaxies fly.
Concerning your soul
The stars sing.
And it is your beauty
Which causes wind to sigh.
Do other wives also
Cause their husbands’ heads
As if entranced to stare
When they dress or undress
Morning or evening
In sweet, married innocence
Without notice or care?
Such sublime, seductive moments
Mostly would be missed
If I ever foolishly
Risked our love with some tryst.
Her beauty’s lights are not less
Than the sky at night does possess.
Being brought by each to my heart’s height
Praising her is my delight.
I wandered once along a fatal path
With a darkened soul filled with wrath.
But from that Hell so far above
I‘ve been lifted by her gentle love.
Such happiness now is found in life
By simply blessing in verse
My precious wife.
From this task I’ll not take rest
For even the length between east and west
Could never measure her loveliness.
Since youth, I’ve thought the saying:
“A Chameleon may change its colors
But on its belly still will crawl”
(A metaphor comparing men to reptiles)
As being accurate and true of all.
Women falling in love with men
Who felt they could make us change
I thought were blinded by affection
Or else totally deranged.
For as a young seductive viper
That spoke with a forked tongue
I considered cheating as proof of prowess
And a sport men played for fun.
Regardless of what I promised
My fang pierced others too.
It seemed unnatural and impossible
For me to be monogamous or true.
Until by God’s amazing grace
I met my lovely wife and we wed.
Then a miraculous transformation occurred:
I became a new creation
And my scaly skin was shed.
I could tell of rainbows
Splashing amazement across the sky:
Symbolic of how the thought of you
Can make me feel inside.
(I could try.)
O maybe mythologically:
Winged horses
Ulysses travails across the seas
Compare you to Helen’s beauty
And your love to Antigone’s.
But all equations would be trivial
False and unfair
Our togetherness is far more special
No, I would not dare.
Certain things I cannot say
Words will not contain them:
The curves of my wife’s body
The sensation of her skin
Or the kaleidoscope of feeling
Each time we’re one, within.
Even metaphors and similes
Fail to describe her accurately
For by her love I’m alive again
And from a dark cloud set free.
Words won’t portray the mystery
When her brown eyes warmly gaze
How this soul from its mist rises
And transcends my mind’s maze.
Whenever laying together
Transported to another sphere:
A place of love, trust and beauty
We become naked, without fear.
If from an infinite black void
The brilliant spinning starry orbs
Do form and suddenly appear
Then the dark areas of my life
Can be illuminated too, my dear.
Keep hoping in your love’s power
Its might and inspiration
For by God’s grace and your patience
I will become a new creation.
I suppose in any marriage
There are chances to follow
An adulterous course and plan
But if so, I am not tempted
For being promiscuous and unfaithful
My conscience could not stand.
I’m loved now more than ever
By a wonderful wife I don’t deserve
And I am determined that
From on the ‘straight and narrow’
Never to deviate nor swerve.
There are aspects of my personality
Of which I have always been ashamed
Perhaps the resulting scars of a childhood
That by abuse was severely maimed.
Though I’ve tried to keep them hidden
All whom I loved eventually found out
And the affection they had directed towards me
Altered its course and turned about.
But there is another more moral self
That transcends these taints and twists
I’m like a man whose nature is obscured
Beneath a face deformed by cysts.
No one else ever saw in me
This person reaching to climb higher
Only you have perceived and loved
My heart’s true longing and desire.
When the craving can’t be denied
And insists with pleasure to be satisfied
Always one, just one, comes to mind
I want you, only you, by my side.
It would be an abomination
To seek ecstasy with another
And a discretion
Skin not yours to cover.
Above no other figure
In rapture shall I hover
For you, only you,
Are my everlasting lover.
No one else in my life before
Has loved me completely, as do you.
Yet deeply within I feel threatened
And don’t know what to do.
Is it wise for me to become vulnerable
And give in all the way?
Or should a prudent distance be preserved
That keeps your love at bay?
You insist that if I destroy my defenses
A heaven on earth we’ll find.
So patient wife I’ll keep trying
To requite your love with all of mine.
My wife satisfies
Not only the ache and yearning
Awakened when just a youth
She also renews my faith in God
For as to His existence
Her love is profound proof.
I never shall be able to weave the words
Even musically, in meter and rhyme
Which can announce with any accuracy
My absolute wonder and amazement
That by some miracle you are mine.
I remember angels
Batheing me with song and caresses
In a dream, when I was a boy.
Since, I have been looking for a woman
Who, as then, could bring such joy.
There were far too many
In whom I sought fulfillment of this quest.
I was ready to surrender
And to settle for much less.
But now my search is ended
From ceaseless wandering, I can rest.
In you I’ve found my answer
At last, again, I’m blest.
In your absence I am lost
Like a leaf tossed by the wind
Some ship that has no rudder
A child without a friend.
Each night is an abyss
In which, languishing, I lay
Waiting for my love’s return
Tomorrow, an eternity away.
We fight as enemies, ferocious, unrelenting.
Harsh words as hurled stones we throw
Unconcerned with consequence.
As cats in a night alley
We clutch, grapple, spit and howl.
Neither repents nor gives an inch
There’s never a thrown in towel.
But when our fury subsides, ebbing slowly
We see how insane we’ve been.
It’s a lie when I say I could leave you.
Sweetheart, forgive my words and temper.
I detest the way I’ve been.
Lately, like wires crossed
We’ve not made connection.
And I fear you may believe
It’s by deliberate intention.
So please know sincerely
You are treasured, dearly.
And I eagerly wait for when
We can share ecstasy again.
If I could play an instrument
Making sweet sounds upon strings
Or decorate a canvas
With colorful, creative things
Weave the words of a sonnet
Cause your soul to sing
Make you somehow forgive me
Give our hearts wings:
Then together we would burn
Brighter than heaven’s fire
And once more our love
Others would envy and desire.
You no longer doubt my love
But know with certainty that I must
And now in all the universe
To me there’s not a treasure
More precious than your trust.
In this expansive cosmos
Exists nothing as sacred as your faith
Even if scientists searched a thousand years
It still would be a waste.
Even if the oceans lay still, silent
Refusing to measure the turns of the earth
With their drums upon the shore
My heart would continue to pound
And love you more and more.
Since we met and married
Life has become brand new
Everything now is altered
I even fly, defying gravity
Unrestrained by its glue.
I’ve seen granite exposed on mountain peaks
Glow from grey to rose to blue
Even seagulls soar and pelicans glide
Over a sea of the rainbow’s hue.
But of all this world’s wonders
I’ve known of nothing to compare
With the beauty of your heart
So open, trusting, bare.
I would rather write words
That speak of me and you:
How my mind turns somersaults
And becomes unglued
Each time I feel your touch
Or you open those brown eyes:
How my heart like a bird
Takes wings and flies.
Instead, becoming serious
I try to write profoundly
Like a sage
Hoping to be in an anthology
My poem upon a page.
But my finest thoughts of inspiration
Are always because of you.
Your heart, your eyes, your beauty:
To me, they’re always new.
When I’m hanging by mere fingertips
From some steep precipice of life
Like a heroine to the rescue
Will miraculously come my wife.
One day, when I grow up
If I try with all my might
She is certainly the role model
I want to be just like.
The absolute comfort of your breasts
My woes wan as cradled I rest
Warm within their loving nest.
Skin so smooth as breathing silk
With soft curves proving a God’s design.
But most wonderful is:
The love I hear beating within
Ceaselessly saying you are mine.
Tonight we made love again
It had been awhile
I’m sorry for being so testy
My words harsh and full of guile.
But I’ve become addicted to your body
Caressing each other, our intimate time
When deprived of you I go crazy
Just as water is essential to life
I need your love to survive.
Age will never alter my affection
For Time wields no sword
That can sever you from my heart.
Always
The beacon of your beauty
Will be the only light I will trust.
Into no other’s net of attractiveness
Shall I ever be lured by lust.
To picnic in a meadow
Walk hand in hand
Pick wildflowers
Make castles in the sand.
Throw pebbles in a stream
Watch grass shed its dew
Just to dream, dream, dream
Of being with you.