He sat in silence as she talked,
but didn't really hear her.

Afterwards he took a walk
updown frigid suburb streets,
where polished cars along the curb
slept like private birds and beasts.

So freshful was the cold night air;
so peacely was the starry sky.
He wandered far, content to be
a maginary man alive.

She sat in silence as he walked,
but didn't feely real him.

Along the path I heard the badger squeal,
stopping me in my tracks, reminding me
of an innocent time when once I rushed
to rescue this weasel from the ragged jaws
of a dogged wolf, swinging my stick, striking
the biter only to be bitten by
the badger I’d just saved from *******,
as if I were his enemy as well.

Now pain remembered engendered new fear
of the badger’s bite as I slowly drew near
the perilous piercing squeals. Then I saw him —
his paw in a trap, the trap on a chain — grim
prospect even for one so fierce and mean.
But do I dare to hope to set him free?
Or stifle mercy for security?

Loving her was like the claim
of a blade of grass to light --
from a seed in a dark, dark womb
of earth

               to the birth
of a will with one purpose:
to break ground,
to crack mountains
that block out light.

The metaphorical heart is in the head,
which is why some literal-minded fellows
have no metaphorical heart, and why,
when their literal hearts literally stop
beating, they may have died for the last time.

Even after the trying and succeeding,
after the unflagging effort, and after
the flagging effort to make another effort,
and finally, after the culmination,
we are still alone.

                                Not that we cannot
choose to be alone, but that we cannot
choose not to be, for if we proceed as if
we did, we find the trying and succeeding
designed to fail.