The Shape Of Death

What does love look like? We know the shape of death. Death is a cloud immense and awesome. At first a lid is lifted from the eye of light: there is a clap of sound, a white blossom belches from the jaw of fright, a pillared cloud churns from white to gray like 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 sea and the moon, the earth's green head. Trapped in its cocoon, its choking breath we 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 dare discover? 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 it cannot 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.