Notes Towards a Love Song

Sample piece from Notes Towards a Love Song

I think you'd like Antigone and her young man.
She tells someone, perhaps her judging uncle,
how she loves the way Hemon worries
when she's not on time -
believing she has come to harm,
Not happy till she's here.

And how you'd love the ending -
Hemon walling himself in, with her
who has his love, is his life.
If she is to die inexorably
so will he, by choice.

But I begin to distrust
the youthful all-or-nothing:
Wall me in or wall me out.
If you cannot love I'll die with you.

You say I shut you out sometimes
and would have me unlearn that,
but I am learning late that there's a degree
of selflessness brings up a sound
like whimpering, the reek of an airless cell.