When Love
when love floods a person
it cuts
a canyon
that deepens year after year
carrying silt
away leaving
the essential person
revealed
letting everyone see
the layers of yellow
sandstone, red basalt
grey granite
when love washes over a person
it washes
the person away
Copyright © 2021 by Alicia Ostriker. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 5, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I have been fascinated for a long time with the parallels between geology and the human personality. Like the earth, we have layers deposited by our experiences. Sometimes we explode like a volcano, and sometimes our experiences can be washed away by strong emotion, leaving something more basic behind. Often I have wanted to feel my ego being washed away by love.”
—Alicia Ostriker
Alicia Ostriker
Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1937, Alicia Ostriker has been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. She served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2015 to 2020.