If you could love as I do
If a song bird could settle your soul like twilight
If you wept for the tug of a rosebud mouth or
trekked tough trails in awkward shoes,
hung another’s pictures in your head or
kept warm in this oddly fashioned coat
If you watched with me while the white tails of deer
bobbed upon waves of forest fog like sails
before dissolving into this ocean of trees
If you could love as I do
then I believe
you would not answer with gun
listen with bomb
think with fist
or slice the song from another man’s throat