My weight is my love,
St. Augustine wrote.
It pulls me under, slows
my step, drags me down
to muck, to protozoa, to knots
of muscle, bone, and blood.
It has no wings, no loft, no
arrow perched in air,
no tousled head, no white
gazebo ringed with thyme.
No. Love is made of stone.
There is no high love,
only low, encumbered love:
I love you—I lug you.
I carried one I loved
inside the house, two bones
snapped; another, I set daily
in her wheelchair.
And even vaults of God,
tall columns to the sky,
anchor on a rock.
Granite block of love—
it’s chiseled for a millwheel
the Spirit ropes around
my neck. It hauls me to
the bottom, since
rock-bottom is where love
must be, the place
of all surrenders.
Dana Delibovi is a poet, essayist, and translator. Her book or translations and essays—Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila—will be published by Monkfish in October 2024. Her work has appeared in After the Art, Apple Valley Review, Bluestem, The Catholic Poetry Room, Confluence, Ezra Translations, Fishbarrel Review, Moria, Noon, Presence, Psaltery & Lyre, Salamander, U.S. Catholic, and many other journals. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best American Essays notable essayist, and a 2023 winner of the Hueston Woods haiku contest. Delibovi is consulting poetry editor at the e-zine Cable Street. Find her at https://danadelibovi.wordpress.com.