Forever in Love: A Celebration of Love and Romance

By June Cotner

Love. It has forever inspired poets, and those touched by its power and grace still find new words to celebrate it. Nothing moves the spirit or the pen of the poet quite like love.

Author June Cotner has long been fascinated by the course of the lifetime relationship between husbands and wives: from the electric sizzle and wild imaginings of love's beginning through the early years of marriage, filled with discovery and grand dreams of the future, and ultimately till the day we part, still in love and grateful for the lifetime companionship.

In Forever in Love, Cotner has collected her favorite love poems and arranged them in chapters set as mileposts in love's long journey. Beginning entries include "The Search," "Attraction," "Longing," and "Courtship." The middle chapters include "Commitment," "Early Years," and "Daily Life," and the book closes with poems gathered under the headings of "Partings" and "Reflections."

Cotner's selections for this compendium are as inspired as the words themselves. Classic writers such as Dickinson, Shakespeare, and Browning lend well-loved words, but this broad-ranging collection draws most of its content from poets writing today, assuring that every reader will discover many new gems to share with one's partner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
• Release date: Jan 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781449465841

June Cotner

June Cotner is the author of the celebrated Graces, Bedside Prayers, Get Well Wishes, Animal Blessings and Family Celebrations. She lives with her husband, two wayward dogs, and two stray cats in Poulsbo, Washington, just outside of Seattle.

Book preview

CONTENTS

Letter to Readers

Thanks

one

THE SEARCH

My Beautiful Love, As Yet Unknown

In Transit

The Blues

You, I Hope to Find

My First Love Story

two

THE ATTRACTION

Him

Transforming Love

Brown Eyes

Seeing You

I Think I Am in Love

three

LONGING

Say

Wild Nights! Wild Nights!

While I Asked Myself

At the Half-Chance of Being Loved

My Heart

Appoggiatura

Only You

four

COURTSHIP

The Bait

Every Kiss Provokes Another

Questions

Last Name

five

MERGING

The Kiss

Remembering

A Love Song

Now!

Beloved

Request

six

COMMITMENT

This Night

Night Secret

Basket of Figs

A Heart Full of Love

Unconditional

Although I Conquer All the Earth

Double Image

Give Me Ten More Years

The Gift

Oath of Friendship

seven

EARLY YEARS

First House

Love Poem

Roots

Marriage Takes Work

Summer on the Farm

We Can

eight

DAILY LIFE

Ordinary Life

Warranty

Away in Virginia, I See a Mustard Field and Think of You

From the Astronaut of Your Heart

Love Life

To Turn from My Forgetting

Upon Awakening

Why

Small Failures as a Wife

Husband Out of Town Thinks About His Wife

Finding Us in Jackson Pollack

The Best Part

Choices

Gratitude

In This Season

In the Middle

nine

STRUGGLES

Marriage Work

Surviving the Seasons

Another New England Winter

Cooperation

How to Return to Your Husband

Long After the Loss

Calling Truce

Sleeping with You

ten

MATURE LOVE

Tenth Anniversary

In the Light of Another Moon

For My Beloved

To My Husband on Our Anniversary

Their Adventures

First Kiss

Anniversary

My Wife Breaks Out

After All These Years of Loving You

Possibly

Magic

Walking in Monet’s Gardens at Giverny

eleven

LATER YEARS

Husband Song

I Held Her Hand Like Porcelain

Epithalamium

Book Lovers

Transition

Long Run Play

In the Comfort Zone

Still Life

twelve

IN SICKNESS

Living Will

For Better, For Worse

If We Let It

For My Wife in the Bone Marrow Unit

Love . . . and Chemo

Touch

After His Second Heart Attack: A Psalm

Porcelain Fragments

My Husband’s First Time Out Since the Diagnosis

Helpless

thirteen

PARTINGS

This Love

Aftereffects

Alone

The Widow

Driving Alone

At the Cimitiére de Montmartre

Passage

On Valentine’s Day

Seasons Lost

Alone Is an Empty House

Music, When Soft Voices Die

You Are Still Here

Be with Me

Migration

fourteen

REFLECTIONS

Marriage

Loving the Distance Between Them

What Counts

Once in a Lifetime

The Living Dream

The Greatest Blessing in Marriage

Marriage Is a Spiritual Contract

Permissions and Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also By June Cotner

LETTER TO READERS

The selections in Forever in Love are a result of years collecting poems about love and marriage that touched me emotionally. When you say I do, it is intended to be forever, and that’s what we all want—a forever bond. Really, marriage is a perfect concept: Two individuals become partners, best friends, and allies for the rest of their days. While our society tends to idealize the lust-love of a new relationship, it’s the true love of a long-term, committed relationship that is the ultimate dream for most of us. I hope this book will help couples realize that even during difficult times love creates bonds that will strengthen them in ways beyond what they could have only imagined when first married. Within these pages, you’ll find an inspiring blueprint of the richness yet to come.

I have always been fascinated by the course of lifetime relationships between husbands and wives. The beginning of any relationship is filled with passion and grand dreams for the future. The early years bring a continued excitement and more thoughts about the reality of melding two lives—and perhaps a third with