Marjorie's Valentine

All these years poetry
having to struggle
under the heavy lash
of trying to make sense
while still keeping
musical time which
is speech-worthy
gregarious and prophetic
and now the conceptualists
the new nominalists
want to plant one half
of reality outside reality
to widen the gap
between rich and poor
is that a metaphor
or what to be the memory
of a people or a single
thing at the moment
of its conception
tongue of flame
if you would be
my steeple