“If equal affection cannot be,
let the most loving one be me.”
Suppose the person you adore

Looks at you with an indifferent eye.
Be grateful. Do not fret or cry.
Lucky is the person who loves more.

Dread the verb “to hurt,”
and the tricky way it works 
or doesn’t work. “You hurt me.”
“I’m hurting.” Which is worse?

A lover swears he’ll stay, though the way
you carry on may be humorless and grim. 
You should affirm the same, but can’t bring
yourself to say you’ll stay with him.
                        

In no home economics class will a pulsar
be discovered.  Never has one been seen
clad in a diaper. No pulsar treat has been
displayed or sold at any Bake Sale run 

by the peacenik PTA for the benefit 
of our town’s recently arrived and still  
under-served families. Nor, in Stockholm, 
have we ever praised the person or the name

of Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the discoverer
of pulsars. We must celebrate right here, 
right now the Mother of that throbbing body.

 Oh, annunciating angel—First human being
of any gender to have seen and known how strong, 
how bright, how strange, how far the pulsars are.