Why Do I Love You

by Lamont Palmer


The why is of no meaning, vanishing 
like dandelion hair upon leaving my certain lips, labially useless, 
or if why remains a visible entity in the air, it appears indefinable, a streak
of light through the night sky puzzling
docile farmers, transfixing cows, or intricate halos on your own soft head.
Why do I love you? I cannot answer it.
The answer would dissolve like dew, when the
sun decides to get out of its celestial bed.
The why cannot be contained or captured, it is too
ethereal, too untouchable, too much of
another realm. Why do the planets hang in the sky
like rocky decorations?, why is there music in the wailing wind?,
why is there blood on the hands of so many? Why, Why Why?
Why will forever remain why, why will die never knowing its origin.
I can only say I love you, I love you, and if this
feeling, like summer rain cooling a humid night
cools us too, and if your hot skin can get air, and the stifling heat is
unfamiliar to your limbs, your face, and you have almost forgotten its sting,
and in the coolness you can breathe air that is
fresh and like silver found after days of digging in a dark cave,
then the why of it is no longer merely untouchable,
it is unnecessary, superfluous, an abundance of 
unneeded answers, interesting, but in the end,
dry and flat and gritty as the taste of water and sand mixed in
a glass, adding nothing, and perhaps taking away
the beauty of the great mystery, like a butcher tearing up
a painting with his eternal cleaver, the canvass, dead and torn and
ugly on the wall.


Why Do I Love You by Lamont Palmer

© Copyright 2001. All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be duplicated or copied without the expressed written consent of the author.



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