Love

Love means to learn to look at yourself

The way one looks at distant things

For you are only one thing among many.

And whoever sees that way heals his heart,

Without knowing it, from various ills—

A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things

So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:

Who serves best doesn’t always understand.

-Czeslaw Milosz

note: A poem by Czeslaw Milosz quoted by Parker J. Palmer in his book On the Brink of Everything, the book I’m currently reading.