2008.12.20

---original work-get permission before using elsewhere---
2008.12.20

What emotion could taunt me so,
to blur the page beneath my eyes?
What centuries hidden life lingers
in these words to grasp my heart?
All emptiness and longing, all death,
and broken despair rocks cold
and melts: ice to this fire.
Is it flame that touches me?
is it truth? These words that stir my soul
and make my heart resound?
Is it song that sings unbroken within me,
sounded from a simple page?
What is this that revives me so,
when even my skin betrays me,
and blood shows through its cracks?

Love, my God! Pure love!
When life is lifeless love lives on;
when death is painless love still cries,
and its embers lie poised for me
in the blackness of the ink on the page
and I burn when i find them.

But when your breath reaches this fire...
even blackness begins to glow.
Heat from everywhere,
and tongues of flame their own contagion.
What love could linger, yet spread like light?
What power could possibly halt, or other solace stand?
Like a ghost I cannot free,
captured inescapably.
Even in memory its power possesses me,
but breath comes only from face.
The face is the presence, the companion of soul.
At some moment these must be the ingredients.
For me this is now.

Lord God of earth and heaven,
May your love haunt me
and your presence never release me.

~JLB
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