small, ugly love
Love gets a bad rap in this life. I feel sorry for it at times, but then I think of all the poems people have written about it and guess it can't be doing too badly for itself … even if it is so amazingly ugly.
Nighttime, more time; let love be a fact
like the sun or math or evolution.
Let it be bow-legged, its hairy swayback
form seen sleeping in the woods and bracken.
We come from the first gods: Earth (Gaea), Love
(Eros), Irony (Hermes). And often
there are jokes and none of us laugh. Above
the jokes there floats, often, a small caption
for the viewing impaired but no one reads
them. No wonder we deny love like we
deny logic and science; we cast it
out to go howling among the milkweeds
and dunes, beating it with sticks. Small, ugly
love, how we all hate you; dolt, fool, halfwit.