The Returns of Love
after George Herbert

There is such generosity in love it will not fit
Within a modest box with corners and a key.
But what if I offer more than I receive? If
My love’s largesse, though open, unencumbered, free,
And furnished without stint to all my friends and foes,
Vanishes in the void, is spent, and lost to me?

Then I remember–love, not cramped in where it goes,
May be reversed, enlarged by love’s complicity,
Its give and take. The sumptuous fragrance of a rose
Accepts no close confinement or captivity.
The tide that outward ebbs, turns then and inward flows,
And what I offer you, you’ll multiply to me.

Luci Shaw