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.
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
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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