Loves -- Another Poem

I felt like I needed to post another poem to counter-act the other. Maybe I'll eventually post all my poetry. I've written less than a dozen. I'm not an oober poet, just a dabbler. I first drafted this in high school and it won some high school award, I forget, and then wrote a new version of it maybe 3 years ago -- perhaps when I knew a little more on the subject? Still learning, though. The "after Stephen Dunn" thing is a homage because he wrote this really excellent poem also called "Loves", and I am a bit borrowing his unique idea. It's sort of like when an amateur repaints a master's work to learn from his techniques. If you walk through the Louvre you see tons of aspiring artists doing it. Anyway, here it is:

Loves
(after Stephen Dunn)

Love is what I love most,
the kind that sweeps me off my feet
and jitterbugs me around the hall
with just a kiss of the eyes.

There’s something majestic to love
in a cloud of stars, and something
in a crescent moon, reminiscent
of an obnoxious grin
from a Cheshire cat.

I love the absolute dark--
the liquid blackness
that pools in my eyes,
inking out the whole world,
and me with it.

Of colors, I love purple. Of foods, Mexican.
Who does not love emperor penguins?
They waddle about,
beaks pointing to frigid blue skies,
as if they know it all.

When the trees come aflame, I love the fall,
and when thunderclouds engulf the sky,
and summer afternoons become pregnant shadow,
rain is coming,
I love that anticipation.
I have never loved the winter,
but it earned my respect back home, in Chicago,
with frost that burned my fingers through thick gloves.

I love words, especially those
that communicate
and the ones that lift me up
just by seeing them against the page
like, light … lithe …life,
maybe I love the letter l:
its slender grace, its lilt, its cursive loop.
And love, of course, such a dazzling word,
to see it, to say or hear it,
to mean it,
I love it more each time.