Take heart!
Even in the twisted times, when reason’s
ring has wrung all meaning
From the lashings of our living’s lessons
When our lips like purse-strings draw the lines of lovers lost
and keening—
Even when our deepest heart connections
(so often indistinguishable
from our heart’s attachments) snap from
the strain
Of holding circumstance in a static place it cannot linger—
Even then you can hear it
If you listen.
Yes, you can.
There is a need for hate and
hurt and pain,
There is a reason our
deepest love can feel like hate when it snaps back
broken, there’s a reason you
dig out the depths of your
Purpose with the jaded spade
of despair (in those twisted times)
If only to make the well
deeper—that well you’ll draw your passion from when
The twisted muscles have
relaxed, when the fears of still more pain have receded
And the muse begins to whisper in your ear.
You are not alone.
No never.
Nor ever are you given more
than you
Can hold, but just enough to
stretch the muscles of your spirit,
And muscles lubed with
patience, faith, and courage stretch with wider motion
Than devotion to some
rigid rote can train them.
You are needed in the after hours—those hours after love has fled
(the lily love
That keeps its fragrance while the
springsun beams, but no longer).
You are needed in the desperate times, when love is menaced (the
polaris love that,
Stringless and implacable, saunters
narrowly around true north but never leaves it).
You are needed stretched and tested, for your heart can love and
hate and clutch and snap
But always, always will it find more of
itself to give.
So take it.
Take Heart.
You are needed.
You are
loved.
-Darren Reiley
