Gay or Straight, Nothing To Prove

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

“The only problem I have with being gay,” a much younger Roger Taber once confided to a friend, is that you always feel you have something to prove.

“Bollocks!” retorted my friend with feeling, “Love, affection, friendship...these things have nothing to prove, they just are... What does being gay having anything to do with it?”

Now, is that naive or wise? I know which answer I go for...

This poem is a villanelle.

GAY OR STRAIGHT, NOTHING TO PROVE

What is it about love,

breaking our every fall?

Nothing to prove

In dark skies above,

listen for its mating call;

(What is it about love?)

Like hand to glove,

poetry to nature’s spell,

nothing to prove

Songbirds above,

taking us where we will;

(What is it about love?)

Where hunters have

well-honed eyes for a kill,

nothing to prove?

Take hand from glove,

watch it wither, as it will;

What is it about love?

Nothing to prove ...

[From: On the Battlefields of Love by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]