Only You Will Love This Poem


Only you will love this poem,
for most have read of love enough,
and many wrote of it before.

Only you will know the curl
of hair over your right eye
was really there, and feel the pull
between my finger and my thumb
as you see fully once more.

Only you understand how much
knowledge of me is in your hands.
Others will call it some device
when I explain you held my life,
pressed it open, drew it back
and dropped your kisses on the trail
of you to me, like steam in a sunbeam
from a captive, boiling dream.

Only you and I believe in demons
that your smile breeds. Who else
examined your shadow,
cartographically aching to know
the precise cursive shoreline
between your flesh and darkness?

Though I cannot hide its passion,
only you will feel its truth.
Only you will love this poem,
for this poem loves only you.


Don Zirilli
July 19, 2000