I CHANGED TO WHAT I AM NOW (ALL BECAUSE OF YOU, IT'S ALWAYS YOU)

For the past months, yesterday, today I've thought of you,
Your fear of loving me, your fear of pain,
My own reluctance soon to love again,
And why we often flee what we pursue.
I've thought: if we could make time disappear,
Prune past and future, make the moment flower,
Lobotomize all save this single hour,
Then we could love with neither hope nor fear.
But when we pause to watch the moment flow,
Beneath we see eternity and space,
So thin a moving film is time and place,
Removing us, and all we love and know.

I cannot but anticipate the end:
Desire a lover, yet fear to lose a friend.

LOVING A FRIEND

Sometimes people grow together slowly,
As trees reach across an old stone wall,
Entangling roots and crossing slender branches
Till one can barely tell which comes from which.

You've become part of my life slowly,
As music, often played, lives in the heart,
Shaping its surroundings to its beauty,
Mirroring the sanctum of its source.

I've come to this realization slowly,
As a deer stands at a clearing, nostrils wide,
Quivers rippling down its delicate legs,
Eyes resigned as lakes await the wind.

Say, my friend, what you must tell me slowly,
Whether my love is also yours, as the sun
Rises or sets over a tranquil valley,
Filling the heart with more than it can hold.