A poet’s love
By Charlene Baldridge
My friend says you can’t
write love, even if you’re a poet.
Does that mean I have
wasted my entire life?
That I am not a poet?
Or merely that I’ve spent
an eon writing the lack of love
or the unrequited love?
Love itself is too precious
and unspeakable for mere
words and, like joy, cannot
be told, only experienced,
like grace, like the deep
wordlessness one feels
when kneeling before the
unsparing Gift.
Human love is mere
reflection and pales
with time, unlike Jesus’
love for me and for her
who went before, uttering thanks.
I wandered Kent and Canterbury
with her, my daughter, my sister,
my love, pondering the assassination
of Thomas Becket, unaware that
one of us would soon be struck
down out of time,
leaving the other powerless to
write about such a love,
we who have so many words
and so few bases of comparison.
