I never asked you to write me love poems.

You are a philosopher
and I am a poet.
I’m fairly certain that poets shouldn’t walk together
someone ought to keep their feet on the ground.
  

We think in different languages you and I.
You speak in the stoic's tongue
and I converse in butterflies and chicory root.
Your ideas are concrete and stone
and mine are dandelion seed and cloud stuff.

You are ******* me sometimes.
The words you don't say.
The tone your voice takes
when your feelings are raw -- slices deep.

Do you know what you do to me
even when I don't say it?
Because I guess my silence
says something in the end.
I'm not sure the child in me has words for it.
Sometimes I just have nothing to say,

I want to be still.
I want to listen to the rumble of your voice,
I want to sun myself in your silence.
There aren't words for that
and so I don't say anything at all.

I am a poet. Some days.
Some days I am an old woman.
And some others I am a little girl.
But I always long to sit at your philosopher's knee
and listen to your thoughts.

My poet heart trembles as I bare myself to you.
I never asked you to write me poetry.
Your smile says everything.