American life in poetry

We constantly compare one thing with another, or attempt to, saying, “Well, you know, love is like … it’s like … well, you know what it’s like.”

Here Bob King, who lives in Colorado, takes an original approach and compares love to the formation of rocks.

Geology

I know the origin of rocks, settling

out of water, hatching crystals

from fire, put under pressure

in various designs I gathered

pretty, picnic after picnic.

And I know about love, a little,

igneous lust, the slow affections

of the sedimentary, the pressure

on earth out of sight to rise up

into material, something solid

you can hold, a whole mountain,

for example, or a loose collection

of pebbles you forgot you were keeping.