The Many Ways Of Keeping Life, (Not Necessarily Love) Poem by RIC BASTASA

there are so many
ways to keep our lives
together
we may live and not love
or we may love and then
not live?
we are here talking and
not making love at all
you keep looking at those
trees walled by this glass
window and i keep looking
at you walled by your words.

there are a few remaining ways
for you to keep me as i am
also figuring out how to make
the ways of keeping you

somehow the way to keep us
is getting slippery like a
fish that we want to catch
with our bare hands to the
consternation of many who
preach what marriage is.