What Is Life?

Poetry is much easier to write
Than to live.
In here, the words and spaces and images
Are easy to control.
Out there, the words and spaces and images
Are out to get you.

If you will fill these words and spaces and images
With love for me
In here,
Then I will fill your words and spaces and images
With love for you
Out there.

Don't ever imagine--
Not for one minute!
That you were not the one I have been searching for this entire time.
Don't ever believe--
Not even for a second!
That I will not leap from this page to defend you.

No, love does not just continue without some effort,
And romances are won with much more difficulty
Than they are in the movies.
This business is lonely, and cold,
And done in robes and slippers beneath the cold moon's eye.
There is still much work to do.