love erases its name

                                                                                               Love erases its name: it

                                                                                                                              writes itself to you).

                                                                                                                           - Paul Celan 

i am the sentence

love serves

in the illegible yard of a family's

un-doings

uttered into predictability

its routine haunts

the stone-bloom of a child's

chalk-drawn flower.

*

from the wall that has always been my limit

i watch

love

in its uniform of sacrifice

erases its name

because it does not recognize itself

in words.

from Cipher and Poverty (The Book of Nothing)  © Mike Schertzer, 1997