Even without clouds

A love sonnet

Pablo Neruda and Matilde Urrutia

Day 11 of 30 Days of Poetry, Autumn 2024

Now the days have gone dry, rain forgotten:
leaves drop one by one, red stains on the air.
Under an eternal sun I wake again by you:
I love you as the skin loves the autumn chill.

Thanks for your love, in every form, sturdily
built and full, boulders gripping the damp dirt.
I love the space you make between the cracks
for wetness, for dew, a rose pushing through.

Even without clouds, between the downpours
you reach deep into the dewy crevices:
from the earth you find our humid reserve.

I love you as one loves the unlit fire,
the crackle of spent trees, tumbling limbs
reaching out to light a darkening eve. 

---

Today’s poem is a tribute to one of my very favorite poets, Pablo Neruda. Neruda wrote thousands of poems in his lifetime. At least 100 of them were love sonnets (written in his original Spanish) for his beloved wife, Matilde.

“Out of such softened relics, then, with hatchet and machete and pocketknife, I have built up these lumber piles of love, and with fourteen boards each I built little houses, so that your eyes, which I adore and sing to, might live in them.”

-- Pablo Neruda,
from the dedication to Matilde, in
Cien sonetos de amor (One Hundred Love Sonnets)

This poem riffs on his Sonnet XVII in the collection, and is a love poem for my own sweetheart.

The prompt came from the word “steamy” given to me by my friend Mike.