Your cute little dog gets more attention than you.
Cute is mathematical. But how it affects me, I haven’t a clue.
Our response to cute is hardwired.
The warmth of a body might be desired,
But the ratio of cuteness is a mystery.
Why do I love you? It’s uncanny.
If science and measurement could tell
Why I love you, would I love you this well?
With deepest feeling, I respond
To your face; a frog jumps into a pond,
A child bends down to pet a dog;
Yet why this pond? Any pond will do.
A thousand dogs bark and yelp.
But you—only you hurt me. And there isn’t any help,
And I don’t think there is meant to be.
It’s crazy—-as if poems using “thee,”
Old romantic poems by those now dead,
Afflicted my youth—but deep in my heart, I love “you” instead,
Though, in truth, it is a love for “thee,”
In the fantastic dreams of my poetry.
There are no cute dogs there.
You wear a white dress. You care.
You care, and love me beneath a tree,
And you cry. I cry. Oh God, I cry. I cry—for thee.