Loving thunderously like you do,
There are times when your heart
Continuing to beat
Has to be enough,
When there is no soft landing,
And all the options seem wrong,
Every road, a dead end.
When you find yourself
In these dire straits, and your breath
Perpetuating its clockwork rise-and-fall in your chest
Is the day’s greatest accomplishment,
Celebrate
The stubbornness of that second hand rhythm,
Your resistance of the urge to rip wheel from cog,
Stop short the whole operation.
Loving thunderously like you do—
Like ten thousand galloping hooves,
Like playing chicken with infinity,
Like biting into that apple,
Like abject dedication,
Like an adept,
Like every
Door
Of every
House of worship
Flung open to the influx of sunlight—
There are times when it feels like dying,
Bent over backwards
Under sackcloth and ashes,
The warp and weft
Pressing into your pliant flesh.
You are built of outstretched
Arms, each spilling
With Damascus Roses.
In the depths of your most exquisite loneliness,
Know this:
In The Grand Call-And-Response
With All-That-Is
That makes up the substance of our earthly existence,
You are the melody
Resolving.
***
Photo: Rose by Paul Seligman
