Not Love Perhaps

The poem

This is not Love, perhaps, Love that lays down its life, that many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, But something written in lighter ink, said in a lower tone, something, perhaps, especially our own.

A need, at times, to be together and talk, And then the finding we can walk More firmly through dark narrow places, And meet more easily nightmare faces; A need to reach out, sometimes, hand to hand, And then find Earth less like an alien land; A need for alliance to defeat The whisperers at the corner of the street.

A need for inns on roads, islands in seas, Halts for discoveries to be shared, Maps checked, notes compared; A need, at times, of each for each, Direct as the need of throat and tongue for speech.