If you want love from me

You need only to ask.

You see, I was never taught this love

The only love I knew when I met you

Was the fleeting kind

If that was love at all

And there was the love learned

When my father would

wash the dishes for my mother

or hold the newspaper

over her hair in the rain.

I am not good at a lover’s love.

Tell me if love is folding towels

or stopping on my way inside

to pull a weed from your front garden.

Tell me if love is fixing

A broken door handle

Or plumbing I know nothing about.

I can do this love.

When the neighbor boy died –

I say boy, but mean a man

Whose mind was more innocent than most,

His brother laid a ball of iron,

A meteorite, on a box of ashes

That the boy had found in

The sandy bottom of a dry

creek bed and said;

               “I will keep this for you

               And give it back

               When the time is right.”

When the flag was draped

Over my father’s casket,

As a bugle played through rain that

Felt more like a flash flood

I thought “I know this pain is love.”

I can do this one.

But tell me about the other love.

The one I’m not very good at.

The love that over time I have

Forgotten how to begin.

Guide my hands when you need them.

I will pull them around you like

A worn cotton shirt.

Tilt your head and I will kiss your neck.

Ask for a flower and I will pick you

A dozen blossoms from the lilac bush.

Tell me you love me a thousand times

And I will say it back.

Every time, I will mean it

More than the last.