Anyone for Love?

Whatever happened to Romance?

You remember Romance—Romance with that Romanesque glance,

that hungry thirst for tulip-tossed words in time and season,

those whispered endearments in boundless variations of radiance,  

rhyme, rhythm and reason.

What unhappy critic would seek to refute

Love’s hackneyed expressions of enslavement?

What misogynist would spurn his lover’s argument,

her surrender to a spell of all that is both clichéd and cute?

Have your ears echoed those forever seasonal phrases, those great

repetitive keys to the unlocking of heaven’s gate?

Those simple, innate

words: “I love you.

And only you.

You alone.

My own.”