Eternal First Glance

What begins in a moment... does not remain a moment.

Eternal First Glance: Sonnets of Love Enduring is a collection of one hundred sonnets that traces the full journey of love-from its quiet awakening to what remains after it has been lived, tested, and changed. Moving through five movements-the glance, the staying, the deepening, the breaking, and the faithful-this collection explores love not as a single experience, but as an unfolding truth.

These poems do not idealize love or preserve it in its earliest form. Instead, they reflect the reality of connection over time: how love grows, how it stretches under pressure, how it sometimes fractures, and how, even then, something of it remains.

With language that is intimate, restrained, and deeply reflective, John David Smith writes with attentiveness to the moments often overlooked-the silence between words, the weight of presence, the quiet decision to remain, and the lasting imprint of what once was.

This collection speaks to those who have:

• experienced the power of a single moment of connection
• learned what it means to stay when love is no longer new
• faced the breaking of something once believed to last
• discovered that even in loss, love leaves something behind

Eternal First Glance is not a book about perfect love.

It is a book about real love-lived, changed, and remembered.

For readers of contemporary poetry, reflective literature, and emotionally grounded sonnets, this collection offers a deeply human exploration of what love becomes over time.