Iteration

[lnhammer]

It has been said too many million times
    In all the totaled permutations
    By millennia of lovers, rhymed
        Or not per styles of nations,

The local talent, or as hormones move
    Them—so too each ingenuous gesture
    That’s meant to flaunt, solicit, prove,
        Touch, thrill, impress, stir—

And all the possible event chains end
    With one deductive conclusion.
    It’s nothing new. I’ll not pretend,
        And you have no illusion

About it. Love is not reducible
    To problems solved, like mathematics
    With old solutions found in tables,
        All columned up and static—

It’s locally derived, an asymptote
    That we approach by repetition,
    Inductively and not by rote.
        Therefore tonight’s addition,

Despite misgivings another term’s a vain
    Recurrence—yet not against my will, no—
    I say it once again (again)
        Here, now, upon our pillow.

—19 December 2001, rev September 2003

---L.