Interpreting a parable I had just read,

I come to a precipitous halt.

And thought how you would decipher it.

Or with a crafty smile,

You would have agreed to my discernment!   

My life has always been a stage,

In which characters played their part and left.

But never had any character loved another,

The way you love everyone,

Modestly and powerlessly!

With you, I could descant about

Nietzsche, Steinback, Chekhov or Mary Oliver!  

You first revel in their realist rhetoric,

And then profess earnestly, 

That others feign to read while I truly read. 

In another act of my life’s play,

The entrance of my heart is shut.

In the vacuity, an arid desert develops,

Stretching to miles and never-ending

But you appear like a distant oasis,    

And both my medium and subject!