As Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead” (Wilde).  Love is essential to all human life. Whether it is a love shared with a significant other, a family member, or even themselves, all humans need love. Everyone loves differently, some often, some rarely. One person may express their love, loving with all of their heart, while another person may love inconspicuously. No matter how a person defines love, or how they may love in their own way, all humans need love. In Brian Doyle’s prose poem “Joyas Volardores”, Doyle uses metaphors and symbolism to show different forms of love in both humans and animals, to argue that all humans love in their own unique way.

The first metaphor Doyle uses is the hummingbird. Hummingbirds are a symbol for the people who love often. Just as a hummingbird, in order to be its true self, must always be active, some people must always have that feeling of love in order to be themselves. “They can fly more than five hundred miles without pausing to rest” (Doyle 95). Here, Doyle is referring to people that go from one love to the next, never in a state without love. Just as a humming bird goes from flower to flower, some people go from one love to the next. These people are very sporadic with love, and in each relationship their love may be different. These people may even love multiple people at once. “If they do not soon find that which is sweet, their hearts grow cold, and they cease to be” (Doyle 95). Here, Doyle conveys the idea that these kinds of people need love constantly, or they will not be able to functions as themselves. A hummingbird without constant flight is no longer a hummingbird, just as these kinds of people need love to fill a certain void in their lives. “They suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature” (Doyle 95). The heart attacks and aneurysms are symbols for heartbreaks. When a person loves as a hummingbird they are going to suffer the most heartbreaks in relationships. Because these people always need a certain amount of love and affection, when that love subsides, these people will suffer emotionally. Through the use of a hummingbird as a metaphor, Doyle conveys the way in which frequent lovers love, although he explains the dangers of this love, he also finds the beauty and reward of this style of love. 

“Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime” (Doyle 95). Here Doyle is making a comparison between a stereotypically fast animal, the humming bird, and the most stereotypically slow animal, the tortoise. In this comparison Doyle is not specifically mentioning the differences in how the two creatures love, but he is mentioning the differences in which they live. He does not mean that literally every creature on earth has only two billion heartbeats, he only uses this as a way to show how certain people live their lives. Some people, like the hummingbird, live in a fast manner. These kinds of people are very sporadic, always looking for a certain excitement or form of adrenaline. These people live with the mentality “Live fast die young” or “You only live once.” Unlike the people that live as a hummingbird, there are the people who live more tortoise like. These kinds of people are ones that live life a little slower, trying to gain more experiences in life. These kinds of people may not always have the most exciting times, but they appreciate the simplicities of life each and every day. Through the comparison of hummingbirds and tortoises, Doyle is able to convey to the reader the two common differences in which people go about living their lives. 

In contrast of the ways in which a hummingbird loves, Doyle uses the blue whale as a way of showing how other people love. The people that love as a blue whale love in an immense way. “The animals with the largest hearts in the world would generally travel in pairs” (Doyle 96). This shows that this style of love is love that is exclusive to one person. A person who loves like a blue whale invests all of their love and emotion to one person. This kind of love is an unbreakable bond between the pair, with each loving each other to the fullest. This kind of love is true love. “The largest animal who ever lived we know nothing about” (Doyle 95). Here Doyle is explaining the exclusiveness of this love. When two people love each other as blue whales would, nobody else can fully understand the love that they share for one another. The love they share for one another is so unique and so everlasting that it is unlikely anyone else has experienced that same sort of love. The sorts of habits that these two people share are likely unusual to others, just as humans may find some of the habits of blue whales to be unusual. The only way to understand this sort of deep, almost unimaginable love is to experience it for yourself. 

“Mammals and birds have hearts with four chambers… We all churn inside.” (Doyle 96). Here, Doyle is conveying the overall message of the poem: that all people need love, but all people love differently. He uses examples of a variety of animals to symbolize all of the different ways in which someone could love. Even if a person is like bacteria, with no heart at all, they still have that fluidity inside of them, representing the love they have for themselves. In Brian Doyle’s prose poem “Joyas Volardores”, Doyle uses metaphors and symbolism to show different forms of love in both humans and animals, to argue that all humans love in their own unique way. Doyle’s message was effective because he was able to simplify the abstract idea of love by using the examples portrayed by different animals.
