Twenty Love Poems: 17

How do I love thee? Let’s not count the ways and days.
To the bottom of the blue ocean where the octopus lies
in purple wait to perpetuate the mythical form below.
The soul’s something to do with it – what I don’t know.
Actually, now I think about it, things don’t divide evenly,
and days after days pass like the beach tides loose over
the rocky pools, sandbars now seen now drowned deep.
That’s how love is: under water, how the starfish spreads
wings, and how the sea anemones attach and attract
moist quiet almost silent prey. Not to be flippant, but
to lie in wait seems unengaged in this era of existential
pandering, but I don’t know of what use passion when
the tide goes out and all my bugs exposed. Men strive
for one thing, and that’s not right while you go for free
or broke time after time, for romance beats the mundane.
Consider the saints who crazy with love sacrifice all even
their love for something abstract we can never count on.
Carry on, my love, blitz me with your supine indifference.