Love Song
By Maggie Dietz
The ancients would lift
a clay spout to your lips—
water and honey and wine.
I give you milk, softened
with wine, and swear
you'll never hunger, never
thirst while I'm alive.
What suffering I can't preclude
I'll soothe with singing:
My future, for you
not the greenness of a leaf
but of the leaves on all
the April branches.
Fire, I give you fuel. I sweat
and chop the wood.
I tender forever in you
who begin where I end as if
your body is
my body, your elegance
my elegance.
Sustenance, emptiness
is lack of you, yearning is
the road to where you are.
You are the road, the where,
the song, the hunger. Child,
I give you sleep, I sing
you there.
Copyright Credit: Maggie Dietz, "Love Song" from That Kind of Happy. Copyright © 2016 by The University of Chicago. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
Source: That Kind of Happy (The University of Chicago Press, 2016)