A poem

LOVE
 

Is there any consolation in knowing

We are all failures at it

Or its derivation, defeat, trying to avoid it?

Maybe you don’t want to read this?

So try Puget Sound

in early morning light

When you might catch an eagle

Sliding over the wrinkled water-

That’s lovely enough

Especially with a hot cup of coffee in your hand

A little respite from love

But like the tide, defeat always returns

Look at it this way, I am in love too

Anything less would be a waste of time.

I include bird-watching though sighting an eagle

Can make one forget for a while, his failures

The hooked beak, yellow eyes.

 The first woman I loved killed herself,

Although if you had seen her black hair,

Heard her laughter,

Or the fight she put up to live

No eagle was more fierce.

I am not going to lie to you

About love, how it breaks us all in the end

For sure, but usually long before.

Maybe you do what I do,

İmagine that you are a better person then you are

The little lies are all right, I think,

To get us from one sunset to the next.

But more and more I hear the water lapping the shore

And it frightens me, maybe you too,

With its frankness.

The second woman I loved

loved me too, but no one wants to know

how love fails, for no special reason

like random driftwood

or tangled rope

or the odd ketchup bottle,

half empty, coming ashore. 

Tom Crawford, the Temple on Monday