Full emptiness

We poets ought to shy away
from homilies concerning love.
What manner of creative thinker
might presume to take a single step
in front of all the ranks of millions
who have wept out tired or inspired
words to probe its depths
or sail upon its turbulence?

Yet here am I, the foolish ingenue
compelled to sigh again,
compelled to co-create a god
up in the sky, or some seductive muse
upon the shore, inclined once more
to let me maunder through the swampland
of bathetic sentiment before a world
still too polite to say "enough."

Somehow a love is least bereft
of purity, when left alone,
the lover sans beloved, never lost.
When form or wit or lovely face,
much less a deity, a sunset or an art
is gone, the one who sits apart
may still, enraptured, know
the flow of love is its own source
and its own silent grace.
~