Below you’ll find the responses to the Sage Challenge for January 2025.
Entries to the Challenges published previously are found in individual issues of the SouthWest Sage. Links to the issues from February 2023 to the present are on the Sage News page. SWW Members have full access to the Newsletter Archives starting in 2004. Go to the Sage Challenge page for details about the current Challenge open to SWW members.
Challenge:
Tell us about Love, in whatever form it means to you. Prose or poetry (up to three poems). No more than 1,000 words total.
Nature Infatuation
by Rachel Bate
My appetite for nature
Has my heart pounding
I yearn to walk amongst nature
I begin my quest
Birds singing with fervor
Magnetize my soul
To encompass
The glorious morning light
I crave the warmth of the sun
On my moist nose and quivering hands
I yearn with desire
The touch
Of a gentle snowflake
On my tongue and lips
Passion touches my soul
I suddenly encounter
A peaceful doe
On the soft snowy trail
Lovingly seeking a safe path
Up the steep mountain
Protecting her offspring
As I look down
I embrace a lone fossil
Longing for appreciation
My heart leaps
A true appetite for Nature
Heavenly Father
Unending Infatuation
True Love!
Love’s Winding Journey
by Mark Fleisher
1.
Remember
I am nine
you ten
my aunt arranges
a play date
I pull the chair
out from under you
why did I do that
I shrug my shoulders
2.
Remember
I am twenty-four
you twenty-five
family dinner arranged
before my aunt
sends us off
You take me to
a Middle Eastern
night club
we drink whiskey
watch a belly dancer
later smooch
in my rental car
Next night raining
we drink red wine
talk till four
at your place
No, we didn’t
I wish we had
I’m off to war
nine thousand
miles away
a fading image
smaller in your
rear view mirror
3.
Remember
I send a card
you answer
we talk
exchange emails
two thousand miles
apart this time
forty-three years
between kisses
I fall in love
in an instant
you hem and haw
zig and zag
maybe I should
get a place or
share a duplex
nothing simple
so many yesterdays
finally together
I love you
you love me
a ring on your finger
a ring on mine
4.
Remember
I was nine
you ten
Remember
Luck
by Mark Fleisher
Is it luck
you remembered
or was I lurking
in shadows
of distant memory
Is it luck you let
me in your life
or was I already
present in
a dormant state
is it luck
you came
to love me
or was it fulfillment
of shared destinies
Wishes for You
by Mark Fleisher
Wade in waters of summer seas
Stroll autumn trails strewn with gifts
from aspens, maples, cottonwoods
Sparkle as crystals
encased in wintry snowflakes
Dance with daffodils
to songs of
spring’s renewal
Revel in Nature’s creation
this day and all.
True Love Found in a Broken Heart
by Jennifer Hallstrom
“Oh my God, I hope I didn’t hurt you,” I whispered tearfully to the baby that the nurse put into my arms. He was crying and I knew deep inside that I had no idea of how to comfort him or how to bond with him at that moment. And I felt ashamed because I didn’t. This shame only added to the self-hatred that I already felt for putting him, my family and myself into this untenable position. At sixteen years old, I was faced with a decision that would affect another person for the rest of my life. The memory that I carry with me is of my tears falling on him while I continued to tell him that I loved him and hoped that I had made the right decision. Right or not, it was the decision I had made and there was no turning back from that point. He would not know this moment in time, but I would carry it with me forever. Weeks before that, I had signed on the dotted line surrendering my rights to my son and giving him away to a future that I knew nothing about. There were no assurances that it would all work out, just an unspoken prayer that someone else would love him even more than I did.
As I held him, I tried to imprint onto my consciousness the shape of his face, the color of his eyes, the slope of his nose and the thickness of his dark black hair. I wanted to get as much of him as I could in the few minutes that they allowed me with him. And then with all the love that I held in my heart, I gave him back to the nurse who took him away to his new mother and his new family. I gave up part of myself for the well-being of someone else; someone I would never get to know, someone I would never get to hold, someone whose name I would never know or what their life would be like. With this love, I broke my own heart just so another mother’s heart could be fulfilled. Was it a loving action? In my immature way, I could only hope that it was the most loving thing that I had ever been asked to do.
My birth story was told to me but cannot be substantiated. I was born in Inchon, South Korea where my mother gave me up to a policeman who took me to a Catholic orphanage. I only weighed 2 lbs. 3 oz and in South Korea in 1966, they didn’t have incubators, so I say that I am only here today by the grace of God, Similac milk and lots of prayers by a lot of Catholic nuns. For a long time, this was the story I carried and that I told. I was never aware of any feeling attached to it. Which made it an easy way to stay detached from being given up for adoption. There was no empathy involved, just a matter a fact attitude toward it. Growing up, I never really saw my birth mother as a human being who went through great heartache from her choices and only wanted the very best that she could offer under the circumstances. I never thought about her much over the years. She was just a part of my story until I had a frame of reference that was indisputable. It was then and only then that I could understand the depth and weight of the love that I had been given when I had to walk, literally, in her shoes.
So often I have missed out on the gift of love by judging the container that it comes in. It wasn’t until I had to give up my son for adoption that I was able to view my own mother’s actions through the lens of compassion; to fully feel how she must have felt when she gave me over to a policeman not knowing if I would live or die, whether I would have any kind of real chance in the world and praying with the same trembling voice as I had “ I hope I didn’t hurt you”. It wasn’t until I truly felt my own mother’s pain of loving and self-sacrifice was I able to connect with her spiritually. I may never get the chance to find her to reassure her that the actions that she took were the ones that were best for me. I can only hope that somehow this type of love can conquer both time and space which will keep a mother and her child’s heart emotionally bonded together. I hope she can feel the love that I carry for her and a gratitude that is rooted in a love that only a birth mother can know. A type of love that creates ripples going outward that in most cases can never be seen by the person who initiated it.
For me, love is an action based on empathy, compassion, acceptance and grace. Sometimes, love is the only thing that we are left with when facing difficult choices that go against a natural instinct to hold on, which is what my head tells me, but my heart tells me otherwise. Throughout our lives, we are all faced with times that challenge our nature and force us to go back to a place of clarity through loving actions and difficult decisions. Loving actions are pure and true to the heart.
Today, I can be comforted knowing that through the actions of both me and my mother, my son and I were graced with the gift of having two mothers that love them. True love that holds no expectation of return. That is truly love beyond measure.
Fireworks Found
by Rose M. Kern
Cher sang, “If you want to know if he loves you so, it’s in his kiss!” But I truly beg to differ.
Kisses can lie. Mark was classically handsome in a Tom Selleck sort of way and he had the most fabulous kiss any woman could even dream of. It was light and exploring, deepening into a fathomless passion. As he kissed me, I fell into a black void shot with stars. Once reason re-established my thought was, “My God, if that was just one kiss, what will sex be like?”
I found out a week or so later.
The kindest thing I could say is that Mark was like Cotton Candy…sweet, but no substance. There was no meat and potatoes behind that kiss! The equipment worked — much too quickly and once it was done, so was he.
On the other hand, there is Rick. Rick’s first kiss was light and tentative, and although he gives me little kisses a lot, he never really learned the art of melting the panties off of a woman just by touching her lips with his.
But he is affectionate and has a lively twinkle in his eyes that entices you to into his playground. This man delivers the ecstasy that Mark’s kiss had merely promised.
Rick explores all the ways that a woman’s body will respond to tickles, and strokes, and licks and nibbles. He does not begin to ask for personal relief until he has already had his partner exploding into outer space and floating back on waves of sensual delight. Only then will he allow himself the same release.
Rick is not classically handsome, he is bald and overweight, and after 28 years of marriage his kisses still tend to be more playful than passionate — but the sex is still fabulous.
Slow Fuse
By Carolyn Hardisty Ruiz
The Greeks had names for specific kinds of love. Pragma: a practical love that can grow over time.
I am attracted to him,
— but due to an absence of butterflies
— and outrageous fantasies
I begin to wonder….
— Is it a slow-burning fuse
— with no skyrockets at the end,
Or is it that my experience
— demands a less distracting way
— — to let love begin.
My Hero
By Carolyn Hardisty Ruiz
Ludus love: playful, casual, spontaneous
A Hero came to town one day
And in my front yard
He did stay.
Accompanied by his young son
They looked to see what
Needed done.
I saw straight away a dose of trouble
Not knowing then it was
Actually a double.
Electric eyes held mine steady
As if to say I’m here
Are you ready?
Come in, come in I said with a grin
And said to myself if not
Now, then when?
As he started to step inside
“Oh look a monster!”
Son suddenly cried.
A monster! How can this be?
I asked and went
Out to see.
“I don’t know, but Dad,
He made a noise
Is that bad?”
“They hiss,” he said, “They hiss.”
Then Hero disappeared
In the whiff of a kiss.
The Maze
By Carolyn Hardisty Ruiz
Storge love: from the Greek, a love of family and community
Lost in a maze looking for the lever which rings the bell
that brings the food and never finding it
I discovered my childhood self and I was amazed.
I remembered the world then with greener grass, bluer skies
and a brighter moon. As a child I loved the world and my family with
an intensity I could hardly bear and an exuberance I could
scarcely contain, but I had forgotten all that.
I had forgotten what it was like to love someone so much
that before I could read a clock I would sense
his approach and wait with excitement because
I knew he’d have something for me, a smile, a hug or a song.
There were others I loved as much In a quieter and more careful
way, for they were quiet and careful people. I never questioned
their love for me…until I was older and wiser.
As a child I could love and care and when I felt hurt or shame
or fear I could hide and cry and then love and care again.
But I had forgotten how to care and to cry and to love.
As I increased in size my importance and power diminished. I
wandered and drifted in the desert dust losing my vision
my hearing, my speech, taste and touch.
Once the most important person in my world and the absolute
power of my universe I became a dandelion. An innocent breeze
intending only to cool the staked plain would carry me away
and scatter me in all directions.
Then on the hot dry plain as I paused, scarred and shattered
a friend beckoned me from the brambles. I stumbled into an oasis,
a land of prophets and poets. I began to heal and remember,
and in remembering I found my childhood self.