This Love

To ask to be loved
Is a colossal demand.
(Perhaps too great to ask at all!)
This is not the palsied sort of love
Bracketed in ironic quotation marks
Or sewn into banners
Or pinned on lapels
Or bandied about by pseudo-Christians,
But love that encompasses and transcends
The heat and ardor of steamy embraces,
The physio-mandated thrusts of passion,
The plunge and drift beyond the climax.
This love shares coffee and cronuts in bed,
Makes an unholy mess of the Sunday paper,
And never refuses a kiss or cuddle.
This love may remain out of reach forever
For paupers like me; I cannot afford
To gussy up digs and trick out my wardrobe
With frills to attract the more genial bees,
Nor am I Hercules clad in a loincloth.
(Such illusions wane with habituation.)
I am dead-center, dull, and unadornable;
Take me or leave me--that is the test--
And though love at first sight is rarely reciprocal,
Before you dismiss me out of hand,
Cast a plumb line into me and see
If ever it touches my deepest depths.