If immortal love exists,
why then this terror. The terror
of the other, being too near . . .
And not only that: of even
walking beside the other person.
You’d ask around. Maybe you weren’t
the only one to feel this.
Summers especially, when dawn is loud,
when you hear at their fullest being,
proud, elegant juncos fighting over the millet,
the jays, the teenage sparrows
who can’t stay on the branch with one another,
then flutter (almost) to the ground
in love with having fallen;
such had been the case for you.
Finding yourself loved or loving, you felt the fear
(as though a frontier
lantern had been held up)
of being almost too dim.
That being an almost
was the same as being
nothing. You know, being
nothing, in relation to him—