On Reading My Poetry Book To My True Love Poem by David McLansky

Chasten me not
With disapproving sighs
For love’s sung words
To other eyes;
Chide me not
For my declension
Of loves misdeeds:
‘Er comprehension;
For these were
Of a school boys tongue,
Rote memory for
What was to come;
Prefiguring you
In sacred quest
Foreshadowing you
And your white breasts;
Praises that merely
Practiced and rehearsed
To sing the merit
Of thy worth,
The anticipate, the ill-surmised,
Of you my beauty.
My distant prize.