February 2025 - Into Love

You are not alone. This message is poetry’s great gift. Other generations, too, have wondered how to find joy in a world on fire, how to spare love for a world seemingly bent on destruction. You are not alone, the poem whispers and lights the way.

Into Love

By Nadia Colburn

Every kiss that was ever kissed—

every smile, every baby’s delight,

a first step, a face that hides

and comes back, a belly laugh—

every morning of gladness,

gladness, that selfsame word we

know because we’ve felt it,

every today, every yesterday

for a hundred years, a thousand,

ten thousand years

in languages now

no one speaks—

every grace, every kindness,

every head that bends down

close to another to listen,

every unchronicled act

of bodies helping bodies

so long gone we cannot

even begin to count

the occasions—

every one is framed

by great suffering,

by deceit, by threat,

by death.

No open plain

of justness,

of rightness; no guarantee

of tomorrow.

But still your lips upon

my lips,

your hand on the small of my back,

my neck, my cheek—

just so, outside

of language, in every

language, across every inch

of time and space:

joy, beauty, thanks—

on the long path

through the meadows

where the forests burned,

through the grasslands,

the stands of evergreens,

the dark woods,

through cities, abandoned lots,

old minefields,

oil fields, we make

our journey. On and on we go,

again stumbling into love.

Nadia Colburn is the author of the poetry books I Say the Sky (winner of the 2024 American Bookfest Book Awards for Best Poetry Book: General and Best Poetry Book: Nature) and The High Shelf. Her poetry and prose have appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Yale Review. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University; and she is a yoga teacher and the founder of Align Your Story Writing School, which brings traditional literary and creative writing studies together with mindfulness, embodied practices, and social and environmental engagement. Find her at nadiacolburn.com, where she offers meditations and free resources for writers. “Into Love” is included in the collection I Say the Sky. It previously was published in Pangyrus.