We have too narrow a concept of love

Love isn't just for people. It's for bars of soap, and city streets, and mourning doves.

Have you ever loved a particular hue? Someone who calls himself “DaVinci” recently posted this on X, saying: “I’ve been loving this shade of blue for a long time.”

We speak of love as if it were a rare and serious thing — a condition that binds us to a chosen few. But the condition of love is much more expansive than that.

Here is one of my favorite poems - Billy Collins’s “Aimless Love” — which reminds us that love is a property that can equally attach to hot showers, baby wrens, and clean white shirts.

AIMLESS LOVE

This morning as I walked along the lake shore, 
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor's window
and later for a bowl of broth
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought, 
without recompense, without gifts
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

There must be a German word for the condition of loving a particular city. I knew this feeling well during the seventeen years I lived in Manhattan. Here, a glorious 1912 painting by Charles Hoffbauer: “New York City at Night.”

No lust, no slam of the door - 
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florda.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor-
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest 
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dresssed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always standing on its tripod, 
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail 
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

You can also love a season, of course, or the simple act of falling leaves.

Today I want to ask you just one question:

*Can you name someone or something you love, that doesn’t fit inside the usual category of worthy-object-of-love?