Prodigal Love
Amidst the raucous chorus of soul-work,
A shard of sweet harmony bristles.
As love is carved by reckless masons
Beating down mountains with chisels.
I pictured a million souls all singing at the same time. Their own tunes, melodies, sole voices…like a orchestra warming up…each is wonderful by itself but few work together…unconducted. Yet I wanted to find hope…that one little sound of harmony from the din of “soul work” out there…even our other “soul work” before we found each other. All these souls, mistaken for “mates” claim to be in love and beat down every intuition; claiming to be artists of Love…they are only masons, craftsmen making something. I find there is a great chasm between those alleged soul mates who are simply craftsmen (masons) of the love they have and those who are true artists.
A lumbering sledge hews an icon of love
Which void of spirit, may still fain sublime.
A chain gang sings, to forlorn swings,
Pounding love into fragments of time.
So I keep with the visual of people working so hard to build love through all these conventions and icons (possession, wedding rings, misthought gifts, bla bla). And even you and I have built these icons with certain others….and while it may be love as “hewn”, it can still be void of spirit while seeming something deep and wonderfully mysterious. It doesn’t need to be. We do this…partners tied at the feet by chains, swinging the old love battle axe to the rhythmic sounds of basic moaning and lamenting…hoping to really refine and sharpen the love we “made” with others…but really only pounding love into fragments…over time. Meanwhile…someone out there is made for the other…I do not consider you my cell mate…we’re not part of highway chain gang…and we move to wonderful songs of promise.
So the dust rises up from the quarries
and the road cuts of paths left behind.
Course calluses tell that loves journey
may not always be poignant or kind.
I pictured the white smokey chisel dust I’ve seen in the mining operations in the distance of the desert and coal operations in PA…a long time ago. I picture the mountain road cuts…from the blasting of paths through mountain landscape. I look at my past and then at the calluses on my hands…I’ve become accustomed to the adage, that love takes work, it’s hard, etc…I don’t subscribe that this is true and would not explain love like this to a child…love is not always poignant and kind…I suppose in its blasphemy, we “behave” in love…rather than flourish in it as happiness.
As each laborer leans toward the other
Sieving the talus of trouble,
In their eyes, gleans a flame reflected
By a glimmer of hope in the rubble.
Then I picture us moving toward one another as we look over all this short work made over a long time. The mistakes, miscalculations, the “trouble” we have of not being happy or in love with those we are “supposed” to be in love with because we were handled a chisel and hammer and told to make it work. So we sort through the rubble and in each others eyes, I picture the reflection of fire light from the cavities of wrecked efforts…and it’s that reflection in your eyes that brings me hope that after all the dust has settled, after all this “work” we have love saved for us by the pure nature of who we are, rather than contrived by us like craft…I guess so long as it’s art, I’ll make love.
Two destined souls, now shimmer
Through the ages and journeys apart
“How I’ve longed the return of this prodigal love
To the warmth of the home in your heart.”
Well then, here we are shimmering bright after all this time and after separate journeys. And I picture this reckless, rebel love (working mason with a misguided passion to slam square pegs into round holes), returning home over the hill (dark clouds behind me in the distance). I’m here now safe, ordered, and warm in a real “home” (not a house) that is only true so long as I’m in your heart….and yours in mine.
