Another Damn Not-Love Poem

What Love Is

What was love
if not this pulse that skipped
when she came in the room?

What was love
if not life's energy spent
to make a single moment be still,
be very still?

"What will love be," she asked,
"when time counts our moment out?"
"Best friends," I answered.
"Best friends," without a pause or doubt!

"What would love be," I laughed,
"if we should prove no better than
the lovers of the past?" All this I said,
not thinking what a shroud my love would turn to,
what a shadow love would cast.

"What must love be," now I would ask,
"that tired feet or the price of meat
can so easily confound it,
so easily rebound it?"

rcs.

5th draft: 07/28/05
©1980 Ronald C. Southern

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