This Much You Can Bet On

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

If youth and beauty are the only things

Worth having, much above all others, then

You know what you must do.  You find their wings

Outside yourself in other places, men

And women, boys and girls, in music, art

And lesser lovelinesses like those eyes

You saw one night inside that bar.  You chart

Your way to find those shoulders, shape and size

You know exist on someone you’ve not met.

You search the world, the universe for hair

So black and curly, dreamed of only, yet . . .

You hope that it is waiting for you.  Where?

  Yes, where besides the mind of God?  You search

    And search and search.  (It won’t be in your church.)