Nobody Believes

Nobody believes in love- not even me. Love is the thing you wait to end. Love is the thing that will not, cannot work. Love is the thing they warn you of- the dire parents, the friends with their dead marriages, their crushed hopes. Nothing crushes hope but the will to make the heart like rock. That will is strong. The rock-heart stands when the love songs crumble, their yellowing sheet music kept in a drawer, their sweet hugs & tugs forgotten, like the merest air of an old New England spring. Spring comes again & again, & the rock-hearts feel the sap rising thinking it is sex, thinking the glands alone cause this tumult to the innards, this hidden spring, this secret river which is hope. Let them put it down to sex! Let them say we worship Dionysus, Bacchus, Pan, but not the proper gods. Let them have the proper gods- Jahweh with his heart like rock, Christ with his blood & thorns, Mammon with his stock certificates, his rates, his rates, his bull markets, & his late rallies. We are rallying alone. We spit our love into the wind. Nobody can bear to watch our love. Except the muse who smiles & sends these poems.