Springfield, Massachusetts: following June 1 2011

[joel]

You heard it— not with ears, but understanding—
heard your sentence rendered— how you’re loved—
and felt condemned, as if to prison; and
it broke you, broke your concentration, moved
your heart— and none of it was love as you’d
expected: and you wavered, “Is this love?”
Your expectations were but lies construed—
premeditated disappointments of
a myth heroic, superhuman god
of rapture, romance, power, prettiness—
and all of these: ubiquitous. But oddly,
even as your past proves pettiness
in what you’d thought that being loved would be,
this truer love’s no poor reality.

[dadio]

your work always moves and enlightens me.