“It is a fearful thing to love what Death can touch.”

And so it is.
I know, for I love you
through all our restless days,
waves crashing blue-black, frothy white,
against our spilling sands,
so rich, so sweet, so deep
and fine it is, it was,
to know your skin,
to taste your tongue, your salty lips.

They say that you are with me still.
In which closed chamber of my closed heart?
Tell me, whisper,
“I am here,”
and I will tear, with my own hands,
that throbbing heart,
and press it to my open breast
to hold you one small moment more.

It is, indeed, a fearful thing, this love,
this dance into the light.
The fingers snap,
the partners change,
the music patters on again,
unheeding, uninvited, unaware.

This poem was the third-place winner in the Robert Penn Warren Award contest co-judged by John Ashbery (1,255 individual poems submitted); it was originally published in The Anthology of New England Writers 2002. The New England Writers was the contest sponsor.