I think that it is valuable reading literature from both the gay and heterosexual perspective, because despite ones sexual preference, both can relate to similar experiences, like love, guilt, pain, etc.
I feel that all three poems speak of a secret love. The first, about the leaves, tells of being able to enjoy a secret and longed for experience, which I assume is being able to love his partner unrestrained by societies judging gaze. The experience is made metaphor by the raking of fall leaves, discovering something beautiful in the middle of a mundane chore. Later, away from work and everyone else, that love is quietly rekindled in a boat on the waters. I think this poem speaks to everyone who has had a first love, or enjoyed a secret love, despite their sexuality.
The Other poems speak of the pain of secret love, of the fear of judgment, and the guilt of conscience. All of us are imperfect and have felt the pangs of harboring some secret, or feeling that we are on the outside looking in, or perhaps something that we love is condemned by the surrounding majority.
I also think that for those of us who are heterosexual, reading this kind of poetry can help us appreciate what it feels like to feel forbidden love more poignantly, just as we can read other literature to try and gain some perspective on the feelings of any marginalized group of people.
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I read these poems through the first time with the understanding that the author was gay. As I read specific lines I was a little disturbed and uncomfortable. But the next time through I read the poem without thinking about the gay author. I read what he was writing and felt many of the things that Dusty explains above. I do see where gay theory would help to more specifically understand this poem. But as for me as heterosexual, I appreciated the poem for what it spoke to me.
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