This St Valentine’s Day we’re choosing to celebrate the everyday, domestic moments of love, the day to day caring that builds a love that lasts a lifetime. Hollywood films are filled with the dramatic; hot air balloons and serenades and new young love have their place, but sometimes you have to take a moment and appreciate the simple things that mean the most in a relationship. Gabriel Fitzmaurice captures these small details in his sonnet ‘Just to be Beside You is Enough’.
JUST TO BE BESIDE YOU IS ENOUGH
Just to be beside you is enough,
Just to make your breakfast tea and toast,
To help you with the ware, that kind of stuff,
Just to get the papers and your post;
To hold you in my arms in calm embrace,
Just to sit beside you at the fire,
Just to trace my fingers on your face
Is more to me than all of youth’s desire;
Just to lie beside you in the night,
To hear you breathe in peace before I sleep,
To wake beside you in the morning light
In the love we sowed together that we reap.
Together we have taken smooth and rough.
Just to be beside you is enough.
This poem is included as part of Best Loved Poems: Favourite Poems from the South of Ireland, a collection of poems from the area by many different poets, accompanied with beautiful photography of the landscapes of the south. If you would like to order a copy, it is available here.
Gabriel Fitzmaurice is one of Ireland’s most prolific poets. This poem will also be included in Gabriel’s upcoming book, A Farewell to Poetry, a collection of Gabriel’s best poems over the course of his career, due for publication later this spring – you can preorder a copy by clicking here.