I think that love is an old wives’ tale,
Whispered low to suckling babes
Beneath the glows of grapefruit firelight.

I think old women sick of pails
And endless spools and groaning crates
Sat by the sinking smoke of twilight

And made it up, like ancient hymn-songs,
To ease the creaking of their hips
And the dusty clink of emptiness.

I think they spun it from their wool-threads,
From the creases of their lips,
From the shadows and their heaviness.

I think their youngest daughters listened,
Then wove this teeth-and-murmur myth
Into the folds of cracking tapestries

I think they painted, whistled, christened
This hallowed folklore into gifts
And all the while grew its majesty.

I think these tales turned to scripture
And the scripture into ballads
And the ballads into diction

And now all these many winters
Since that single haggard crone-wife
First dreamt up this wind-swept fiction,

And that first pink-****** maiden
Spun beside these tales and heard them
And repeated them anew -

And now, we murmur these same fables
To our teething, blushing children
And believe them to be true.