Love Rises in the Body and Stalls in the Heart

by Chapman Burgess

Love comes in to the body slowly like water
And floods first in the low places.
When I was a baby it made me kick my feet.
By the time I was a toddler I could feel it in
My calves as I climbed up on every thing.
In grade school it arrived in my thighs one day
When my legs were sudden wings.
I was only 12 when it came up into my groin.
At 19 it had risen higher yet
And how swelled it filled my heart.
But it was a long time after that until I met you
When it reached my head, the final part.

————————————————————–CEBurgess (2006)