A poem for Monday

Someday they will ask you what love is,
those quiet voices.
Maybe you will say:
That love is boundless and blistering
as the first day of August,
wrapping all trees and chimneys
in its light.
Or maybe:
That love is a long afternoon indoors,
cool blessed air, an icy glass of anything,
bare conversation and bare feet up.
And you cannot forget:
That love is ragged toil,
heartbeat to heartbeat and day after day,
till the weeks run raw,
till your spine shifts from the years of it.
And you know, too:
That love is a blade without a handle
that gleams like galaxies in the dark,
cutting through coffins and entropy
and your palm as well; and the dark
in which it gleams is also love,
patient, silent, perfect, and broken,
an embrace that needs and has no name.
But maybe
you will only say:
That love is right now,
it is right now,
it is right now,
and so disperse, you quiet voices,
and stop asking what love is
and I will practice
what it does.