
The little lifetimes of first love
All whirling and crashing
about your heart
like hungry snowflakes,
all different
all the same,
till one
does not melt away.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Henry David Thoreau
I dragged this gravely handsome phrase into many dark bars in my twenties. Although a false introspection on my part, it predictably generated a sexual eagerness in most women who equated words, they did not understand, with all the preconditions for the love they had earlier memorized while pouring through romance magazines.
The puzzle of attraction is the lifetime preoccupation of all men.
No one ever tells boys how to do it.
When I was little, comic books convinced me I could purchase these skills by mail.
Below is an advertisement I answered.
It only worked on three girls and two boys.
The company did not return my money.
We are forever guessing
if we are a song.
Nothing is soundless.
We suspect
but are never sure that our noises carry.
My whistling
may reach Neptune.
But Neptune, like God, does not echo.
Birds don’t care so much
for their songs.
They care about eggs and nests
and the size of baby new wings.
Cicadas lullaby summer evenings.
But the night doesn’t pick up
their theme
and begin to dance.
Flies whizz their little ditties
by our ears.
And we brush them away,
like eavesdropped insults.
The flowers
exhale their perfumes
into the winds to
blind the dazzled slave bees.
Nothing disturbs the evenhanded blizzard
that is being alive,
but the drama of surprising death,
and the odd collisions with love.
She sits among her snowflake suitors.
All sincere,
Each different,
Each the same
all waiting.
Until she finds
the one that echoes her song.
PUBLISHED: June 30, 2016
FILED UNDER: Unnoticed in Clever Worlds
PUBLISHED: January 1, 2019
FILED UNDER: Unnoticed in Clever Worlds
Little girls hold lots of love.
They brim with it so early
It spills out to cover everyone
But mostly dolls and daddy
They wait for boys to notice them
But boys can be such babies
Boys show off and push and shove
That says they will be coming.
Crushes are fun and kill the time
with the handsome men in movies.
Then engagement rings slip on and off
As proposals, there are so many.
She will be there waiting still
Until her little boy is ready.