The Shape of Death

What does love look like? We know

the shape of death. Death is a cloud

immense and awesome. At first a lid

is lifted from the eye of light:

there is a clap of sound, a white blossom

belches from the jaw of fright,

a pillared cloud churns from white to gray

like a monstrous brain that bursts and burns,

then turns sickly black, spilling away,

filling the whole sky with ashes of dread;

thickly it wraps, between the clean sea

and the moon, the earth's green head.

Trapped in its cocoon, its choking breath

we know the shape of death:

Death is a cloud.

What does love look like?

Is it a particle, a star -

invisible entirely, beyond the microscope and Palomar?

A dimension unimagined, past the length of hope?

Is it a climate far and fair that we shall never dare

discover? What is its color, and its alchemy?

Is it a jewel in the earth-can it be dug?

Or dredged from the sea? Can it be bought?

Can it be sown and harvested?

Is it a shy beast to be caught?

Death is a cloud,

immense, a clap of sound.

Love is little and not loud.

It nests within each cell, and it

cannot be split.

It is a ray, a seed, a note, a word,

a secret motion of our air and blood.

It is not alien, it is near-

our very skin-

a sheath to keep us pure of fear.