What does love look like?
We knowthe shape of death.
Death is a cloudimmense and awesome.
At first a lidis lifted from the eye of light:there is a clap of sound, a white blossombelches from the jaw of fright,a pillared cloud churns from white to graylike a monstrous brain that bursts and burns,then turns sickly black, spilling away,filling the whole sky with ashes of dread;thickly it wraps, between the clean seaand the moon, the earth's green head.
Trapped in its cocoon, its choking breathwe know the shape of death:
Death is a cloud.
What does love look like?
Is it a particle, a star -invisible entirely, beyond the microscope and Palomar?
A dimension unimagined, past the length of hope?
Is it a climate far and fair that we shall never darediscover?
What is its color, and its alchemy?
Is it a jewel in the earth-can it be dug?
Or dredged from the sea?
Can it be bought?
Can it be sown and harvested?
Is it a shy beast to be caught?
Death is a cloud,immense, a clap of sound.
Love is little and not loud.
It nests within each cell, and itcannot be split.
It is a ray, a seed, a note, a word,a secret motion of our air and blood.
It is not alien, it is near-our very skin-a sheath to keep us pure of fear.
