Ageing Worst
The things that age the fastest are love’s thrills.
An adult mayfly, living only hours,
Is emblematic. In love’s heat are chills
Of dying. Love has only briefest powers.
Its chills are fevers seeking some escape.
We just don’t know that till it’s far too late
For heart adjustments. Love is like a rape.
It ravages. It comes and goes, a spate
Of passion in a mountain stream down rocks
It surges suddenly, explodes and hurls
Itself about inside us. We endure its shocks.
And then it settles in a pool. An eddy swirls.
..And that’s that. The pool is deep or shallow.
….The scarlet and purple both go sallow.