The burden we poets carry
Our love poems within which
we refer to as “he, she, you“
So many imagine it them
or fear it someone else.
Dear beloved pronoun…
I have fallen in love with you
in poems written before I knew you
and lines I’ve yet to conceive.
“You” are the throne
that every “she” ascends.
Note: In many hundreds of poems, essays, aphorisms, and in both published books and unpublished manuscripts…. my use of pronouns like “he, she, and you” (sometimes capitalized, sometimes not) has elicited many questions of me, among them; “who is this person you speak of?” As if there necessarily were. Every poet speaks to someone in his imagined audience at any given moment. But in truth, he speaks of a deeper light than his own, a light reflecting upon the amazing geometries of listeners. A poem unheard, is exile for a writer. And so this poem.
Yes, there have been names. But that One name has yet to be found to “silence these pronouns,” to gently turn about in the spectacular light of a star, and simply stay.
