New Love poem, 2006 by Sharon Olds

First,

I had had a thought

so unnerving

I went cold

all over, in the

heat

What if I

love this man,

whom I hardly

know,

more than

I’ve loved

any other man, and at once

I was a water fountain,

at grammar school, in the hall, a bubbler,

I was bubblering,

I had turned into a water-bearer

who couldn’t bear but

blubbered her water

with gulpy

blubbers

on a hot summer day. Years

I had been a sudden desert fountain

most days, at old love’s fresh sudden end. And now, here

I am, again,

but not in my cherryskin armor, again, not with my cherry bow and juice-tipped

arrows

and dried cherry jerkin and quiver, and cherry scenthound—not that aging cherry Artemis again, it feels different, now, with this humorous curious man, I feel as if we may be the distilled fruit, the liquor itself, as if

I’m in the interior

of new love’s mouth,

I am safe,

under his tongue. And under my own tongue, look who you see—look!, perfectly safe, it is he.