Bill Wolak

Bill Wolak is a poet who lives in New Jersey and teaches Creative Writing at William Paterson University. He has just published his thirteenth collection of poetry entitled Love Opens the Hands: New and Selected Love Poems with Nirala Press. His most recent translation with Mahmood Karimi-Hakak, Love Me More Than the Others: Selected Poetry or Iraj Mirza, was published by Cross-Cultural Communications in 2014. Recently, he was a featured poet at The Mihai Eminescu International Poetry Festival in Craiova, Romania.

Love Opens the Hands

Only the heart enjoys

this fishing without a net;

beauty locks all the doors

and disaster breaks them down.

Long absence resonates anticipation

like the guesswork of desire,

but deep roots grow

deliberately around rock

so that any guest who finally arrives

eclipses the sun becoming the feast

and the wine and the dessert.

Touch the scar, and it

will offer some astounding advice:

loveliness fades, but not grace;

the world loves lightning

less than fire.

Love opens the hands for kindness.

and kindness is a debtBi

you never tire of repaying.

(previously published in Kritya:  A Journal of Poetry and in Archeology of Light, Cross-Cultural Communications, 2011)