What Love Is (a poem)

When did the milky whites of your beautiful eyes turn dark?  and your smile fade away?
Not jaded, only innocent and clear, not self conscious or full of fear.


Your smile was open and bright, fresh and light, no guile in your grip or in sight.


And then the road you walked grew stony as you fell and tripped and harmed yourself,
none was your own fault.


Born too green, too gentle for a world so incredulously cruel and unfair to you.

How many times can you come back from the fall?  When you only have one soul, one body, one life you know of.


Can you go on swimming through the muck like a soldier, a brave, a warrior, never thinking that you would have to live to fight? eventually surrender turning to the light.


It should never have been that way, 
should have been an easier way to play,
the game that should ne'er been a game,
but you stand here smiling just the same.


And I know you will come back from this
and somehow see what love is.