It’s dangerous to love, swooshing tires spout,
as they slide across streets rain wet
in daylight’s tangled traffic,
radio announcers broadcast multiple warnings
of caution against opening
one’s pink heart too fast or often,
although these words are garbled in code
heard only by few on the outskirted margins
of the listening multitude.

Even crimson apples gleaming and piled in pyramids
on supermarket aisles shine out,
as acres of fruit stridently shout:
“if your true core of feeling greets the world’s
wildness and woes and steps out of, or sheds,
its cushion of clothes, things unspoken,
unknown shall emerge without question
from the black shadows unseen.

Life and her fellows may buy you outright,
pack you up and tight in a brown grocery sack,
carry you off and away to god knows where-
perhaps a small cottage on a blue misted lake
or an art studio upstairs many months and more miles
from where you began.

And in a sweet daze, bewildered beguiled,
if lucky or blessed,
you may slowly hear music
played by a curly haired child,
and decide to allow what is now here to unfold,
as if there were free choice in love’s ancient story
re-told.