Not so much with the bliss
I’ve no poetry of my own in me at the moment, so I thought I’d share someone else’s. This poem found me last week, timely as such things so frequently are. I kept it because it echoes the frustration I feel in my ignorance as to what the hell it’s all about.
WRATHFUL DEVOTION
by Jennifer Welwood
You gave me a heart that ignites
In the passionate knowing of you,
And having burned in that heat
Is not drawn to lesser fires.
You gave me a mind that expands
To encounter your vastness,
And finds in those fathomless depths
Its own luminous nature.
You gave me a soul that won’t rest
With any barrier to you,
Be it heavy and dense
Or gossamer as a veil.
You gave me an old structure
Made up of my history;
It is heavy and dense,
It is gossamer as a veil.
I meet it, allow it, explore it
And still it grinds on,
A machine that relentlessly churns out
Old patterns and tendencies.
I embrace it, dissolve it, release it –
Still it keeps reincarnating,
Rising up from some ancient template
Held deep in my bones.
I don’t begrudge you your sense of humor,
Beloved trickster,
But I do wonder, now and then,
What you have in mind.
Did you make me to realize a freedom
I can’t fully embody?
Do my heart and soul burn for a truth
That I can’t fully live?
I commune with you in the heavens –
It’s not hard to find you there;
But I need you down here,
In the marrow of my bones.
You can’t turn away now — stay here;
I will have this out with you.
You started something with me,
And now I want it finished.
Yes — I will wrestle with you on this one,
Beloved torturer;
I will wrestle you all the way down
To the very ground
And not rest till I stand
With the soles of my feet upon you,
And not rest till I feel you infuse
My every cell.