"Love arrives / and in its train come ecstasies / old memories of pleasure / ancient histories of pain. / Yet if we are bold, / love strikes away the chains of fear / from our souls. / We are weaned from our timidity / In the flush of love's light / we dare be brave / And suddenly we see / that love costs all we are / and will ever be. / Yet it is only love / which sets us free." — "Touched by an Angel," Maya Angelou
"My monkey-wrench man is my sweet patootie; / the lover of my life, my youth and age. / My heart belongs to him and to him only; / the children of my flesh are his and bear his rage / Now grown to years advancing through the dozens / the honeyed kiss, the lips of wine and fire / fade blissfully into the distant years of yonder / but all my days of Happiness and wonder / are cradled in his arms and eyes entire. / They carry us under the waters of the world / out past the starposts of a distant planet / And creeping through the seaweed of the ocean / they tangle us with ropes and yarn of memories / where we have been together, you and I." — "Love Song for Alex, 1979," Margaret Walker
"I had not thought of violets late, / The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet / In wistful April days, when lovers mate / And wander through the fields in raptures sweet. / The thought of violets meant florists' shops, / And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine; / And garish lights, and mincing little fops / And cabarets and soaps, and deadening wines. / So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed, / I had forgot wide fields; and clear brown streams; / The perfect loveliness that God has made,— / Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams. / And now—unwittingly, you've made me dream / Of violets, and my soul's forgotten gleam." — "Sonnet," Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson