just once to say ‘i love you’ all the feeling felt
to dwell inside the words as they are spoken
(not broken on the tongue by my intent
conscious or otherwise
to hold back in speech each feeling
behind the syntax of my own attention
naming song what never sings
but is a circling in my tension round you)
that desire to ‘say’ totally
in gesture as in word
all that i do feel for you
locked up in hesitations i give you as poems
Nichol, bp. "love song 2" Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets. Queyras, Sina, ed. New York: Persea Books, 2005. 183.
