What is Love?

Is it love when I say, I love you?

Is it love when I say, I care?

Is it love when I look

 at a scruffy teddy bear?

Is love the swirling angst

 of being all alone?

Is love the word, goodbye, 

when it cuts you to the bone?

Is love the tear that jewels your cheek

 in morning's early hue

When the night you spent alone

 left your pillow wet with dew?

Is love a sometime thing

That comes and goes each day?

Or, is love an endless current

Urging flow without dismay?

Is love a two way thing

That seeks a balanced set?

Or, can love go on and on

Never needing to be met?

Is balance, inequality or 

harmony a ghost?

Is love the thing you get

When you get what you want most?

Is love one thing that

Does not change or changes all the time?

Is it mine or yours or theirs or ours

If the seasons set in rhyme?

When does love become a dust ball?

When do stars begin to glow?

When does heavy, humid air

Catch a cold and turn to snow?

I don't know what heaven's angels

Have in store for you and me.

I don't know why all God's creature's

Build a nest or climb a tree.

All I know is that He's watching,

Sometimes laughing, sometimes not

And that what we do will show us

What will happen, what will not.

©Herb Ratliff, January 5, 2011, All Rights Reserved