The Wild Woman On Love

[Love Cats from p4poetry.com]

for Poets United's Thursday Think Tank prompt: Love

When I was young,
I dreamed Love
was out there
somewhere
just waiting for me,
and one day
it would find me.

When I was young,
I was tame.
I had been
trained
to stay within
safe confines,
trained to dream
standard
Technicolor dreams,
of boundaries
surrounded by
white picket fences.
Trained not to think
for one moment
that life could be
an adventure,
could be More,
could be
wild and free.

Marriage,
babies,
divorce,
single motherhood,
all hard work,
too exhausted
to do much more
than survive,
and yet,
somehow,
I did.

Love had been
a disappointment.
I did not find The One.

But I began to realize
you can't find
the love you need
Out There,
only within.
Instead of
looking for
The One,
I had to learn
the harder task,
of learning to value
and have compassion
for The Self.
Instead of looking
for the person
who would complete
my life,
I needed
to be that person,
and complete it
for myself.

It was a hard lesson,
accompanied by
tears,
but it was the lesson
I was meant to learn
this lifetime:
how to go it alone.

In time,
I began
to dream
a very wild
dream.
It involved
the universe,
and trust,
and one gigantic leap
out of my comfort zone
and into the
life of my dreams.

Wild Woman came alive
with an excited howl,
finally freed from
her fetters,
and we plunged into
frizzy-haired
wolf-howl
West Coast
living,
liberation,
life without limits,
where Different
was welcomed
and normal,
where life was
as big or as small
as you wanted
to make it.

In time,
I had to leave
that place.
But I brought
Wild Woman
with me
when I left.
She was rather quiet,
and tired,
bone-weary
from the long fatigue
of living.
Every now and then
she rattles my bones and
gives a long howl
to let me know
she is still in there,
still up for
another adventure,
for newness,
for dreams
with no limits.

We are still in love
with the land,
with the wind,
with the tall and  
toppling trees,
with night skies
and morning dew
and the smell of earth
stirring
in springtime.

Love? It never was
what I had been taught.
It never did come in
as a gift
from someone else
in the way
I had expected.
Instead, it goes out,
constantly,
from within
to all that
surrounds me:
babies, old people,
dogs, horses,
the sky,
forest trails,
the sea,
eagles and herons,
humanity itself,
transcendental heroes.
Love is in the living.
Love has never been
in the receiving,
nearly as much as
it is in 
the giving.