Tidbits from my old files: Love and Pain

I don't know how to describe the following, which I wrote on April 19, 1985. Is it poetry?

Love and pain are one, in one direction only

You can't have love without
the possibility of pain;
but pain does not
reciprocate the favor.

The more you have,
the more you stand to lose;
but fear of loss is not
a reason for not having.

The more you love,
the more you can be hurt;
but fear of hurt must not
be reason for not loving.

The key to this dilemma in our lives
may lie in our "impossible" desires
that good things last forever;
but is love a "thing"?
are we a "thing"?

Our fingernails are things
our arms and legs are things
our brains are things,
but I am not my arm or my leg
or even my brain
nor even all these things combined.

Why, then, be downcast?
Why mourn prematurely for
losses that may be less by far
than meets the eye?

Have courage!
Be not afraid:
of departing daughters, in one direction,
or parents, in another direction
or physical universes in still another.

For why assume
that what lies ahead is
less than what we know today?