Loving Slowly

Today I was reading Mary Oliver poems, which I'm beginning to think I should do every day. And in the spirit of this Week of Love, I wanted to post an excerpt I read that seemed apropos:

Also I wanted
to be able to love. And we all know

how that one goes, don’t we?

Slowly

—from “Dogfish”

We've likely all had the experience of falling head-over-heels for someone in more or less a matter of minutes. Or maybe days, if you're being conservative. I'm pretty sure a good chunk of my teenage existence was characterized by such carefree indulgences. But more and more, I'm beginning to see the virtue of the slow accumulation of light that warms and expands and maybe even aches at times, but somehow comes out the other side as a deep and abiding love. Maybe that's the best kind of love, or in a sense the only kind of real love. Slowly, but surely.