In a crowd, you are the furniture,
in a boat, you are the sail.
In a song, you are the unsung note.
In a drought, you are the rain.
And you are surely also
the burr inside a sock.
And you are the thirst, the drought itself.
And you the spine, the lack.
In a storm, you are the slicker,
and you also the hail.
And I am the one who practices how
to love however you are.
Those first two lines strike me as important to setting up the diversity of what the “you” is. I like how the metaphors stretch to contrast as well as complement. I might have said “on a boat” in the second one.
For being the gore-tex in storms, for being the burr in my heart—I love you.