I Love You Poem by Daniel Thomas Moran

Since I dared say
those words for
the first time, to you,
they have hollowed,
useless as a goblet
after the wine is drunk.

My throat, my lips
no longer
form them well.
I have offered them
too many times
to the unworthy,
who begged them
of me and were gone.

I am a man
attempting feebly
to work words into
the figures of birds.
They have no life
beyond my wishes.

For you, the only one
who has mattered,
I’ve not the words,
nor the tools to
fashion them any longer.
Because of you,
the world will
never be the same.

I cannot say why,
still I know.


Instead, take my fingers
over your shoulder, as
we fall to our sleeping.
Take the darkness, how it
keeps us there, within it.
Take how this morning’s
light falls over our roof
and splashes over the trees.
Take all the colors.

We share time
and nourishment. We
mingle our breaths
and our dreaming. We
look to no past.

I love you is not enough.
Some things defy the naming.

Let me rest my head
on your shoulder and
rest yours on mine.
Take my glance, it
contains much more.
I have no words
more true, more tender
that what is found
in that vast silence.