The word love means someone takes you
in your old clothes, your face too bare, too open,
when someone fastens the buttons on your coat
as if you’ve fallen back through sixty years to be
a child again, when someone takes you onto the path
holding you by the arm, your feet not knowing what
they used to know, your feet in rubber boots stumbling,
blind to roots and stones, when someone takes you
to the ocean, the water also in the air raining down
its saltless weeping, the word love means someone
takes you to the rocks, rain too heavy for the gulls
to fly, three bobbing like windless boats, all sails
and heartbeats, love leaves you there, no words
for it now, you and the gulls and the ocean
that moves as far away from you as it can go.
~ from Small Mechanics (McClelland & Stewart, 2011)
