Is Love Sustainable Poem by Mark Heathcote

Is love sustainable, I sense-it's-rare?
Like life on St. Kilda dangling from a rope
mid-air to catch a nesting cliff bird and
an egg or two, a meal, in other words.

Is love sustainable, I guess it could be.
But it's like winning at solitaire
there's no one to cheat but yourself
and invariably, that's just what you do.

It would have to be a miracle to last
It's a surgeon's incision through arteries.
It's a pulmonary artery bypassing
A chain of ghosts wailing to breathe as one once.

And I'm still here achingly alone
teaching grandmother to suck eggs;
dangling from the desolate cliffs of St. Kilda
clutching what looks like a broken empty nest.

At best, I guess it could be.
At best, I guess it could be.
At best, I guess it could be.
If we are resilient in our hearts and souls.