Lovers and poems

Maybe poems are like lovers.

That when you meet a new one,
you forget about the old?

The tingle you feel from the novelty
of this meeting, of this romance,
makes you oblivious to
the thrill and depth of passion
you felt for the last.
The new expression of love
somehow makes the old
redundant, although the old still rings true.

Maybe lovers are like poems.

The new one demands that
you love her just like
you loved the previous one, if not more.
The new one demands that
you create new dreams with words
and forget the old dreams
though they also were of truth and beauty.

With you,
I can't ever know
if I am your old lover

or your new poem.

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This just came to me. I'm sitting at the lab at Las Cruces, away from my favored fountain pen and stack of uncreased, fresh white paper. I'm partial to those trusted tools for my creative writing. I guess the urge to write this particular piece was so strong that I typed it on the computer. It wasn't the nice feeling of fountain pen writing on plain paper and giving birth to a poem that'll sing to me for a while yet. I think, despite all that, I enjoyed writing this piece.