Of course it’s possible to fall in love in thirty seconds. It happens

every time I pass through the 81st St. station on the express and see 

through the window a trapeze artist or ballet dancer on the platform 

across the tracks. I get it, I do. But when it happens every thirty seconds 

I have to wonder whether you understand that quantity is not quality. 

Will it be ever thus? It’s well for the traveler to wander that he may cleave 

again to the path. And I’m your path, Thaliarchus. There is no question. 

You’ve walked all over me. Every time you’ve had your head turned, I 

remind myself I married a music man. But when you took your hall pass 

and left the classroom, I also went into circulation. My checkout card 

has more stamps on it than I care to admit, but no one kept me past 

my due date. Our suitcases are always packed and our harmonicas 

live in our pockets. Our hats have an aversion to dust and train whistles 

make us restless. We’ve left and returned and left again. But always 

to return. Eventually you have to pick a side, though, and we usually 

chose each other’s. These dalliances, what are they? Heartfawn, there’s 

a German word for what happens to your body when it starts to conform

to its work. Think of the carpenter’s hunch or the wrestler’s ears. Soon 

a man is suited for little else than the thing he’s done for ages. You’ll 

probably recall it before I do, but in any case, that’s what happened 

to my heart. So when you say you love me but aren’t ‘in love’ 

with me, I get confused. For if love is an art what you’re saying 

makes no sense. It’s what we do that matters and the sounds 

coming out of our mouth are only noises. Most songs you listen to 

come to an end, but the ones we sing ourselves don’t have to. 

Either use your words or else stop thinking. Tell me about your day 

and ask me about mine. Perhaps then you’ll see what we’re about. 

I will fight to win the sparrowhawk. The third term is us.

Robert Farrell lives and works as a librarian and philosophy instructor in the Bronx, New York. His poems have appeared in Magma, Posit, Narrative, The Brooklyn Review, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies and elsewhere. His chapbooks, Meditations on the Body (2017) and Some Birds for Robert Rauschenberg (2025) are published by Ghostbird Press.