it's life and life only

by Richard Brautigan

I don't know what it is,
  but I distrust myself
  when I start to like a girl
  a lot.

  It makes me nervous.
  I don't say the right things
  or perhaps I start
  to examine,
  evaluate,
 compute
  what I am saying.

  If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"
  and she says, "I don't know,"
  I start thinking : Does she really like me? 

  In other words
  I get a little creepy. 

  A friend of mine once said,
  "It's twenty times better to be friends
  with someone
  than it is to be in love with them." 

  I think he's right and besides,
  it's raining somewhere, programming flowers
  and keeping snails happy.
  That's all taken care of.

  BUT 

  if a girl likes me a lot
  and starts getting real nervous
  and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
  and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
  and she says things like,
  "Do you think it's going to rain?"
  and I say, "It beats me,"
  and she says, "Oh,"
  and looks a little sad
  at the clear blue California sky,
  I think : Thank God, it's you, baby, this time
  instead of me.

by Ted Kooser

First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
“For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned.” And she will.

by Lucille Clifton

to my aunt blanche
who rolled from grass to driveway
into the street one sunday morning.
i was ten. i had never seen
a human woman hurl her basketball
of a body into the traffic of the world.
Praise to the drivers who stopped in time.
Praise to the faith with which she rose
after some moments then slowly walked
sighing back to her family.
Praise to the arms which understood
little or nothing of what it meant
but welcomed her in without judgment,
accepting it all like children might,
like God.