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Someone Will Love You Many Times

Someone will love you many times.

Many times over and over a red flame.

Over a million dollars and someone will love you a million dollars.

You will be loved from all over and from pockets and sandwiches

and someone will stick her hand through a plate-glass window to love you

and from between two sheets.

Over and over and many times love will come at you

from a rooftop with billowy sheets

and Miley Cyrus will love you

and so will Spiro Agnew. Many times

the Earth will love your stomach,

for many times and for the thousands of times you have answered the door

and no one was there.

For the many times you were down on your knees between the tile and

the toilet.

Someone will take your hair and hold it behind your head

many, many times over and over.

Someone will walk with you down the summer path,

all those pink and purple wildflowers getting wild for you,

getting wild for your love and for the stench of your absence.

You will send it back time and time again—

when the buildings shake, when the show is over,

when the shadows creep tall into your tall brain and mess it up.

It is a truth that can’t be untruthed—

that someone will love you many times no matter how tired they are,

the way a blade of grass takes itself not too seriously

and grinds out other blades of grass. Look at them out there,

all stupid and green

in the backyard,

count them all. I bet you can’t.

That’s how many times you will be loved, count them all,

I bet you can’t.

By someone who couldn’t be more serious about love.

And is.

from Mesmerizing Sadly BeautifulFind more by Matthew Lippman at the library

Copyright © 2020 Matthew Lippman
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.

Published in Matthew Lippman Poems

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this (publication, website, exhibit, etc.) do not necessarily represent those of the Idaho Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.