Over the top

"We're all stumbling towards the light with varying degrees
of grace at any given moment."

Bo Lozof


When was love ever painless,
free of expectation and fear?
I’ll pass on what I felt,
direct from the heart of a child.
An overwhelming adoration -
unconditional, pure, and simple;
it damned near disassembled me.

The memory of that flash
of sheer love helpless
raps on my shoulder -
wrings me like a mop.
It wasn’t as if I had loved
any better before or after
that moment and I’m not sure
that I was anything
more than a conduit.
Beyond anything I’ve experienced,
it was a clue to how
we felt as babies surrounded
by love and safety;
but in the face of limits -
girded by the existential no;
we forget.

All our lives we seek
to recreate the yes
by expecting another person
to give it to us, unconditionally.
Despite our conditions and frailties,
our blathering imperfections;
somehow that other is
supposed to be all that
we are not, and it maddens us
when we find out that
they are just like us -
weak frightened foolish
flabbergasted children.

Love is not just
something we need to get,
it’s what we need to give;
and what you give
you get back tenfold.
And the more unassuming
the gift - the richer you become.
You don’t have to believe this -
just live it and you’ll see.
Don’t try to stem
the rise from its incessant source;
become what you are,
a chalice overflowing -
life begetting life.

Who would have thought
we could find heaven
inside our own chests?
But the saints and the masters;
they always knew.



© 2001 Melissa Songer