Images help the reader to realize a meaningful experience in the poem. I use the word "realize," which means literally "to make real" (as "centralize" means "to make central"). The poem is given an existence of visual reality to the imagination, in forms which the reader can understand.

Sometimes an experience is so pure that we don't want to clothe it in symbolic colors, however golden. We might express an experience in a one-word poem: "Alive!" Or we might write a poem like this:

I awoke before dawn
And began to smile
With the face of someone new.
Born a morning child.

I ran to the window.
And looked out to the night.
With hands I'd never seen,
I turned on every light.

And I saw,
As I opened
A new pair of eyes:
I really am alive!

A poem might be like a breeze of images that correspond to the things that we see in the physical world. Another poem might interact primarily with the emotions. But every poem can be experienced by the mind, through the mind's prime tool, logic.

There are things in this world which seem illogical or, perhaps, logic-transcending. In poetry, night can be day, though not in the sense of clocks and schedules. Starlight can seem as bright as daylight to one who loves stars.

A love poem can have a perspective of the mind's logic: "I love you because ..."

Or the poem can be emotional, declaring a passionate desire.

Or there can be a physical viewpoint, in which the object of love is owned.

Or the poem might be written from, and about, a state of freedom -- soul's unconditional love.

A love poem might have been written by a person who has never known love, but can imagine it. Or perhaps it was written from the deepest experience. The same poem might be interpreted as that of a spiritual love or a sexual love.

Some poems are ambiguous; we don't know where the love is directed. Perhaps the poet wrote it this way to allow the readers to enjoy it from the level and perspective that are most real to them.