LUXURIES by Janavi Held

This is my version of the Beatles song "All You Need is Love"...

I was also thinking about what Mother Teresa had said, that the greatest need she saw in the people she cared for was the need for love.

"Heart with a View" Photographic art by the author, Janavi Held

Luxuries

by Janavi Held

I am not speaking

of disposable incomes

nor of gold shaped luxuries

nor the inheritance of idle time.

I speak of need.

Of being lost in the desert

one moment from death

and suddenly there is water.

I speak of a child on city streets

whose lonely bones protrude

through sagging skin.

I speak of feeding her.

Because I am

that animal

desert lost

and that girl-child

with street slackened skin

and longing bones

I can no longer conceal

by day or night.

The luxury of love

cannot be measured

by the libertine

nor by the stop-gap

remedies of this

incarceration.

Time measures our activities

and this death-like time

does not concern himself

with our disposable income,

nor with our gold shaped

luxuries, and idle time.

The luxury of love

owns eternity

and

nothing more.

"Fire in the Heart" Photographic art by the author, Janavi Held

Janavi Held is the author of Letters to my Oldest Friend: A Book of Poetry and Photography. She has also contributed poems to two poetry anthologies, Bhakti Blossoms: A Collection of Contemporary Vaishnavi Poetry and GODDESS: When She Rules: Expressions by Contemporary Women. Two of her poems were shortlisted for the prestigious Hamilton House International Poetry Prize awarded by the University Centre Grimsby, and published in their anthology "Eternal". Janavi started writing poetry and wandering around with her father’s camera as a child. At the age of nineteen, she began practicing Bhakti yoga. She held a bachelor’s degree from Goddard College where she studied poetry, photography, and media studies. She passed away peacefully in December of 2018 after having battled a brutal illness. You may read more of her poems and view her artwork on her website here and Facebook page here.

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