Where Will Love Go?

Where will love go? When my father
died, and my love could no longer shine
on the oily drink-darkened slopes of his skin,
then my love for him lived inside me,
and lived wherever the fog they made of him
coiled like a spirit. And when I die
my love for him will live in my vapor
and live in my children, some of it
still rubbed into the grain of the desk my father left me
and the dark-red pores of the leather chair which he
sat in, in a stupor, when I was a child, and then
gave me passionately after his death--our
souls seem locked in it, together,
two alloys in a metal, and we're there
in the black and silver workings of his 40-pound
1932 Underwood,
the trapezes stilled inside it on the desk
in front of the chair. Even when the children
have died, our love will live in their children
and still be here in the arm of the chair,
locked in it, like the secret structure of matter,

but what if we ruin everything,
the earth burning like a human body,
storms of soot wreathing it
in permanent winter? Where will love go?
Will the smoke be made of animal love,
will the clouds of roasted ice, circling
the globe, be all that is left of love,
will the sphere of cold, turning ash,
seen by no one, heard by no one
hold all
our love? Then love
is powerless, and means nothing.

Sharon Olds