Alien Love Poem by Nancy Ames

Old poets never smile; they stare at us
with disappointed intelligence, desperate
to comprehend our stupidity and blaming
themselves forever for every motherless,
howling child engendered by their absent-
minded, winderness-wandering sperm,
condescending as a subtle but clinging
mist falling invisibly down out of those
white, amorphous, radiant clouds that
hover here and there and move on again,
inquiring persistently for someone they
used to know on this planet, and sometimes
their frantic, frustrated searchlights burn
circles into the ground.