Linda Pastan entitles her poem “Love Poem,” and yet, the speaker only expresses the desire to write a poem—she does not directly qualify this poem as one (except in the title). The spring melt and resultant flood works as a metaphor for love in that the phenomena echoes the experience of a first love—fast and all-encompassing, a rush. Pastan’s speaker, though, is not experiencing this rush for the first time, but is standing with her beloved on the “dangerous / banks” (Lines 6-7) of “our creek” (Line 3). The danger, if no less dangerous, is a known quantity. The speaker wants her poem to be “as headlong” (Line 2) as the wild waters, but holds her own head above the torrent, to “watch it” (Line 7).

The poet cannot create a poem like the creek, which indiscriminately carries “with it every twig / every dry leaf and branch” (Lines 8-9). A poem cannot contain everything “in its path” (Line 10); a poem steers toward concision. A rushing stream does not edit or make choices, as the poet surely does, even when writing about love.

Love, as an unstoppable force, will roll right over “every scruple” (Line 11).