Nobody believes in love- not even me. Love is the thing you wait to end. Love is the thing that will not, cannot work. Love is the thing they warn you of- the dire parents, the friends with their dead marriages, their crushed hopes. Nothing crushes hope but the will to make the heart like rock. That will is strong. The rock-heart stands when the love songs crumble, their yellowing sheet music kept in a drawer, their sweet hugs & tugs forgotten, like the merest air of an old New England spring. Spring comes again & again, & the rock-hearts feel the sap rising thinking it is s**, thinking the glands alone cause this tumult to the innards, this hidden spring, this secret river which is hope. Let them put it down to s**! Let them say we worship Dionysus, Bacchus, Pan, but not the proper gods. Let them have the proper gods- Jahweh with his heart like rock, Christ with his blood & thorns, Mammon with his stock certificates, his rates, his rates, his bull markets, & his late rallies. We are rallying alone. We spit our love into the wind. Nobody can bear to watch our love. Except the muse who smiles & sends these poems.