Sometimes love

Sometimes love
Can be as simple
as finding your daughter’s mouse dead in its cage
And burying it
While she’s out of town

Sometimes love can be as simple as a dog
Touching his cheeks as he turns his
Large white head to your hand

Sometimes love can be easy as making your son’s bed
Or smelling his washed head or holding
His hermit crab while giving it water

(For my sake, realize the mouse was old
And she knew
And had picked a place out to bury
Her, dear Silver)

Sometimes love is crying over those you’ve lost
In war, and in tragedy

And in nothing but peace, like flurries by the tarmac
Sometimes love can be not killing a man
You know deserves to die
Or hunting
For food for a family
Hungry in an Appalachian winter
And making a quick and merciful kill

And sometimes love is sitting
On the memorial benches
Among the dead outside
The Pentagon with pictures
Of your friends
With pictures of them smiling
With pictures before
They were a bench

And sometimes love can be the last story
Before bed
Or describing constellations
To your children
you hope will live so far into the future
And live such good lives into that dim
Horizon