Second Story
index:

             
SIX LOVE POEMS:  A DIME A DOZEN

       I

Every night with you
discovering unexpected
continents . . .

       II

What I mean by loving you
is not simple reduction
of night to the common 
denominator of a bed.

       III

When we walk by,
step matching slow step,
old men on park benches
(remembering, smiling
at our loving), are only
shadows on time's face.

       IV

So - they say love is beautiful.
Evidently they don't count
the hours of dying-in-love
of love - taut lines between lovers,
incubus-ridden nights alone.
So don't say love is beautiful
until you've walked those lines,
those nights and come out safe.

       V

Others (their ideas, opinions,
        needs, clocks),
nail me to the wall.

Sometimes
I'd like to be a lone
       (no shadows except
        my own)
living on borrowed standard time
without loving you.

       VI

You must have got up
before sunrise
and scratched
your name
on the frosted window.
When I woke
you were gone -
only
your name
fading
in the risen sun
said that you
really had been here.
             

Second Story
by Mildred A. Rose

The
Mildred Rose
Collection

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Copyright 1976 by Mildred A. Rose,
all rights reserved.
Originally published by The Music House Press.
No part of this collection may be reproduced,
except in short reviews, without the
author's permission.