Lioness and Love

Flowing red hair around a heart-shaped face
Was not what made me fall in love with her.
I have known other lovers, and known the grace
Of beauty gleaming like a lamp through sheer
Lace curtains, and no longer do I love beauty,
Or at least not for itself alone. I have a duty

To my heart, and to my mind, and to my spirit,
Not to body alone, though that too for her aches.
I do not know this love's origin, and I fear it-
For myself, for her uninterest, for both our sakes.
I try to convince myself that I breathe lust,
Not a love that could make of my inhibitions dust.

It is not love that makes me catch my breath
When she tosses back her head, and her throat
Flushes with the pulse of life in the midst of death,
Sounding a glad and a brassy roaring note.
All around us sit and work the oblivious dead,
Not knowing that their lives hang by a thread,

That she is more alive than any of them are,
That she is a lioness stalking among the deer
Who do not even realize she shines like a star,
That they should thrill, as I do, with love and fear,
And go bounding away from her when she speaks.
They should fear that keen eye that eagerly seeks

Out the reasons why I flee, and the mouth that asks
Why, when I am pressed back and cannot flee.
The hand that glances over my arm my control tasks,
And I close my eyes so that I do not have to see
The way that her eyes shine with tenderness true.
How could I look at her and say, "I love you?"

She is too wild, too bold, and that a man
Clasps her arm and has the right to her smiles
Is actually the least of the reasons that I can
Speak of this mad, strange love, save at whiles
When I know that no one is here but paper and me.
She is a lioness, so fair and fierce, fiery and free-

How could I chain her down, compel her to run
Beside someone who knows and fears her own heart?
No, best that she continue to shine in the sun,
Even when the blaze is enough to tear me apart.
Still I will watch her. That joy none can deny,
The lust after a beauty no less deep than the sky.