One Precious Moment - A Poem, ca. 1969

It hurts to love someone and have them
ride over your emotions like an elephant
thundering over an ant hill, unconscious
and uncaring except for themselves.

Needs are the essentials of existence
not for money or fame but for the craving
of the soul, the feeling of complete concern
the knowing that someone cares.

The desire to belong to someone else
as only people can.
The compulsion to feel the truth of love,
understanding the food of life, the psychic umbrella
of protection against insecurity, against hopelessness

in the living, the warmth of darkness
when you curl closely against a loved back or belly
content to let it be the only need,
for that one precious moment.