Where Love May Pass

Down pity it first ran by the firelight,
By a yellow twinge of pain:
And, that pain should come from pity,
Rolled into tenderness
Of a warm red that firelight glows
And flickers down filter to net in appleskin.
Struck into tender suggestion of movement,
Teetered on edge of pain's ruin,
Recoiled into wavering, place gained;
There follows the love-lurch through a wide forest,
Open beneath the boughs, scattered with moonray and padded needles,
Slipping down to black-dancing water
Where is dipping and drinking,
To gaze on the end of things.
Love wells out of black water
When tenderness presses down fear;
Tears out heart-wrung rock
To mount and cool in age-long similar streams;
Breath of half-conscious ecstasy
Raising to plateau of void-fear.
And love wells up heart-ease of youth half-gone.

—Pat Wilson.