There is a price tag on love
I know, I saw it there
on the shelf at the drugstore
next to small fuzzy toys
red hearts on sticks, bags
of shiny confetti, I saw
that amazing, wonderful
thing packaged, contained
waiting to be consumed
articulated, bent, handled
delivered and destroyed
eventually…and I thought
about small children
in faraway places sitting
sleeping, standing starving
without mothers, hope
destiny and I thought of
broken people in hospitals
laid out, waiting to heal, to
die sometimes…alone
I thought of fathers missing
daughters, sons…mothers
sitting silent with their tears
a vast expanse of emptiness
like a gargantuan iron weight
slowly crushing them…and
I thought that the price
was cheap, that the cost
was meaningless if, only if
the love was transferred
translated, transfigured and
transported from where
it was born—a warm, pulsing
spot inside—to land on that
child, that mother, that
father, that broken body
and be the stone archway
the building that holds that
gargantuan iron weight
above and shelters us from
harm, from hurt, from having
no one reach out and touch
our battered bruised souls.