Yes. I do love you. These tears of admission
Salt my cheeks and yours, as heart gates open,
Here in the luxury of your golden arms.
We edge along this scary precipice
Of aspiration, a furnace of hope,
Feeding on coals of cautionary fear,
And stoked by passions that pick me up and
Drop me, hissing loud, in the quenching pool,
Where I don’t control how the soul anneals,
Yielding untested alloys that I need
To handle, hammer and reforge again,
To assure myself not that all’s just so,
But finally to know that transcendent love
Is not calculus but wings of a dove.
–John Avery, 2025