Today's poem is by Daisy Bassen

This is a love poem if you squint hard enough
       

I hope you know
That when I say
I hope, I don't;
Nothing rises within
Me, nothing peers out
From a corner, nothing
Takes hold of me
Like the labor of birth,
The ease of a wanted
Conception. I've given
Up already, assuming
The worst: ignorance
Or a positive rejection
With the nerveless force
Of jostling magnets.

I hope you know
Something I imagine
Nestled in your mind
As the iron globe
Onion-layered at the earth's
Impossible depth, spinning
And still, the rooted origin
Of auroras, an ungrown green
North and south, egalitarian
In its display, most generous
When it's winter, when
We're so very cold.

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Copyright © 2023 Daisy Bassen All rights reserved
from The Louisville Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission