How to Write a Sustainable Love Poem
by Miriam N. Kotzin
First wonder if the love you celebrate
will prove sustainable. Will it endure,
renewed, a life-time guaranteed amour,
or does it have an expiration date?
Then ask if love should die, whose heart (or mind)
will be the first to slow then turn away;
then mark the watched-for changes day by day—
who’s first indifferent, then disinclined.
If you’re the one who’s left behind, then write
about enduring grief. Take care to tune your moan
with rhyme and meter. Do control your tone:
use lots of sugar; serve up honeyed spite.
And though your love limps off to die, your verse
will stride along to pass the grinding hearse.
