Divine Heart

 

Struck by something—a recognition, a face I knew but had never met before.

A divine call in the heart? Love at first sight? The first love? The non-verbal.

His arms around me—a warm waterfall I never anticipated.

Yes it is possible to live for sixteen years and not know love. To be filled with

do this, and don’t do that! Holding oneself within, tense, afraid,

guarded, defensive, quick to shoot. The passage that is open to the world

can leave you pregnant with scorn, loneliness and poverty.

We were warned so often.

And what about the drive within? For fools and horses! 

No warning that love fills the street with a golden beam 

radiating in front of your feet, and thunder in your chest

you fear everyone can hear. 

And he is gentle the way he holds you so that nothing else can intervene.

when suddenly—danger on the grass! The ancient pull of desire fulfilling

the womb’s mission and the reptilian call louder than any other.

Stop I said. He stopped.

We walked that silence back to school. Then I did the unforgivable.

Sent him a note to say it was over, as if it was all his fault.

What the writing of it meant I do not know, but too soon realized 

the precious thing I threw away. Divine heart reaching outward 

onto streets where I wept out the vanities of who I was and was not.

After weeks of crying myself to sleep, my father quietly stood at the door

to ask why. My face in the pillow, he waited for words I could not speak.

He waited and waited and waited. None could be found, but in that tension

I realized that he loved too. Mind and heart connect at the place where

grief is mute.

(from Infinite Power, Ekstasis 2016)