Wednesday, July 14, 2010

A Just Love

There is room for at least one other in each true relationship. In fact it is essential. It was said a little while ago that it takes a village to raise a child. It is quite possible that it takes a village to build a true love. Lacking such a village, we are called to rely more radically on the one who left us here, who will return for us at last.

That last phrasing is lifted from a song written and sung by many in the folk and folk/rock scene in my younger years. I sang it too. It is one of the names of God.

A Just Love

Love like this is just.
Love like this fits us, a rose
on the pillow left
by The One who will
take confusion and weave it
into a halo
that hovers above
like a crown of thorns lifted
off us in blessing.

June 13, 2009 9:14 PM
Retitled and Amended, July 14, 2010 7:15 PM

7 comments:

  1. Oh how I need this...confusion to halo. How long will it take? How much deeper the confusion before the weave? I grow tired.

    Beautiful poem Christopher.

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  2. You should be published, Dhristopher.

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  3. Annie, first you have to lift off the patina left by "the deliberate manufacture of confusion". There is no hope of finding the measure of how long before you can refrain from the persistent self created part of it.

    Ouch.

    This situation is true of us all. How long before I quit hitting myself is the first question. But even then, there is a residue left behind, the confusion in the planet's orbit, and the confusion of all the others that bleeds across the lines. That residue may at times become the larger part. But most often in my life I am the victim of my own creation in this as in all other forms of my suffering.

    Some claim that the residue, the confusion and other forms of suffering that bleed across the lines, that confusion can legitimately be claimed to not be mine, but that these issues are still mine in the larger scheme, set up by aeons of life after life of "the deliberate manufacture of misery", that only here is justice.

    I am not so sure, but only because I feel more innocent than that. That feeling of innocence may simply be insanity and denial or ignorance of the greater transgressions found in my life after life.

    My words are the long way around to coming to this short reply:

    I have no fucking idea how long.

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  4. Karen, You may forget how public this medium we choose actually is, and how many readers come and go.

    I really don't want to deal with the deadlines and pressures of another "real job", assuming I could find one as a "published poet". If God wants me to go there He will have to push much harder than He has.

    One of the true life experiences of writing and being published is present here. If you take away the whirl of publicity, of book selling, the day to day experience of the books being out there is the same as the return on posting on blogs, a few people will reply but most of the readers will not.

    You surely can't be thinking there would be any money or other self promotion in it?? Poets always do something else for that, unless something weird happens. I get returns on the service to humanity part of this just as well here as anywhere.

    I started counting at the end of May and my blog has been touched over two thousand times. There are a few steady readers, at least one of whom is completely anonymous and comment free. My audience is global, except for Siberia and the heart of Africa.

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  5. you took your warm fingers
    and stroked my face
    wiping each tear as it fell
    unashamed and tender
    in its understanding.

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  6. :D

    Baptismal Waters

    You spoke well to me,
    a voice I will not forget,
    words that wove true love,
    a weaving that took
    threads of air, of fire, the warp,
    earth and water, weft.
    Your tears were warm rain,
    tears of great and new release,
    and I've collected
    them for baptism
    for they are truly holy
    as now so are we.

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  7. I really meant you should be widely available to other readers. I really don't think of poetry as a capital venture. That never occurred to me. I guess I didn't know how widely read the blogs are. I don't have a counter on mine.

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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