LOVE POEM BY TODD SWIFT, VALENTINE'S DAY 2014

LOVE

They say love comes in threes.

Such trilogies extend

Times into books four to seven.

Erupt into eight in dreams.

I’ve seen love compared

To what was once Heaven

And now belongs to lies.

Also, love appears in songs

At intervals so regular

It must be true.

Always, the argument goes,

Love is the first, second, third

And final thing of value

In the singer’s world.

Mountains, friend

Are nothing

When the sea comes

Yet love will climb

Far above such lower levels.

Love is even, it has been said,

Delivered by the devil,

Or some equivalent minion,

From fat boy to lolling tart.

They hate love so much

They tend to kill it

With a dart

Drawn straight through

The designated heart.

I have seen dissection tables

In labs where trained

Believers in natural laws

Have torn a gazelle apart.

It feels like that,

The songs say,

Each time it beats its fluid out,

Drop by sustained drop;

It is worse than scalpels

At the chest cavity,

Cold as December,

To have love pulled out.

So odd a toxin,

It kills when going in

Or leaving the body.

Love is the little murderer

In cotton shorts

With wings

But love is also

The dove after slaughter

Who beyond battery

Arrives austere from Ararat to sing.

February 2014

Comments

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