and if I love you this is incidental

I sorta think I'm not entitled to enjoy love poems since I don't have my own someone to love. Well, I have lots of folks to love and plenty, praise goddess, that love me back, but you know what I mean, my own special someone, a mate. I don't know if I want to be in love to be in love or just so I can read love poems to him. These poems, from Alice Oswald's The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile, are gobsmacking me today. She writes about love, not 'just' romantic love. And I am in love with everything these days, especially the sun.

WEDDING

From time to time our love is like a sail
and when the sail begins to alternate
from tack to tack, it's like a swallowtail
and when the swallow flies it's like a coat;
and if the coat is yours, it has a tear
like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins
to draw the wind, it's like a trumpeter
and when the trumpet blows, it blows like millions. . .
and this, my love, when millions come and go
beyond the need of us, is like a trick;
and when the trick begins, it's like a toe
tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck;
and when the luck begins, it's like a wedding,
which is like love, which is like everything.

BALLAD OF A SHADOW

Take from me my voice and I shall voiceless go
to find you, take from me my face,
I'll treck the hills invisibly,
my strength, and I shall run but keep no pace.

Even in cities, take the sense with which I reason
and I shall seek, but close it in your heart,
keep this and forget this
and this, when we're apart,

will be the shadow game of love.
And I shall love in secret
and I shall love in crowds
and love in darkness, in the quiet

outlet of shadows, and in cities
as a ghost walking unnoticed,
and love with books, using their pages like a wind,
not reading, and with people, latticed

by words but through the lattice loving.
And when at last my love is understood,
with you I shall not love but breathe
and turn by breathing into flesh and blood.

SEA SONNET

A field, a sea-flower, three stones, a stile
Not one thing close to another
throughout air. The cliff's uplifted lawns.
You and I walk as wicker in virtual contact.

Prepositions lie exposed. All along
the swimmer is deeper than the water.
I have looked under the wave,
I saw your body floating on the darkness.

Oh time and water cannot touch.
Not touch. Only a blog far out,
your singularity and the sea's
inalienable currents flow at angles. . .

and if I love you this is incidental
as on the sand one blue towel, one white towel.