Streetlamp on Wicked Bridge

Author: Stephen W. Cote

Love

Consumes a thousand words

To digest a pure

Wickedness

Poets

Literary pawnbrokers

Have sold their souls for love.

Oh yes,

They are the ones who define

It as cantankerous

And humiliating

But they at least experience it

Like neither you nor I may

For they see how powerful

This love

Can be.

We work for our bread

And hard, leaden water

While we are told

What love is.

Love, in a thousand words, more or less,

Is a light which shines

When no one looks

And no one cares

Over the single woman

Who has thrown herself from a dreary climb

Into colder, lonelier waters below.

Life,

The Wicked Bridge

From birth to death, spanning death

In all of its natural beauty

Yet still we fear it,

And it leads nowhere.

It is only a moment away

From eternity.

And love is the streetlamp

Which lights our way

Just before death consumes us,

Saving us from the

Wickedness.