(02/15/2014) A Valentine, 2014

Feeling that some of you may have felt a bit let down on yesterday, today, I share a poem (below) that more directly bares my thoughts and feelings as a man caught up in the romance of life.  As my readers now know, my first choice was not to share a traditional “love poem” on Valentine’s Day.  Instead, I shared my annual Black History Month poem for 2014.  Love poems are some of the most difficult to write, because they easily become dull expressions of immaturity, lust, and someone else’s private affairs (fit only for voyeurs).  Often love poems lack meaningful and memorable images; and tend to rely heavily upon childish and singsong rhymes, or over-familiar language that is dry, offensive, trite, and unbalanced.

What I prefer to speak of, then, is love that is an aspect of divinity, appearing first as a lifetime commitment and continuing as everlasting life.  (The truth being told, many of us can only confess to having been caught up in the storm of emotions we too quickly labeled “love”, and we only ever embraced ashes and smoke—the residue from fantasies of love.)  Even so, recent weather events, here, have made me more aware of my love for the sphere of our living.  We have now seen blizzard and earthquake in the Nation’s Capital.  In addition, not long ago, I saw a rare sight where one layer of clouds was being blown by the wind, all rushing to the South, while a layer of clouds rushing just above it were all being blown to the North.  I asked myself, how can that be—having never seen clouds layered that way—and knowing the answer, that nothing is impossible with GOD.  (Almost immediately a stranger came to me who said, “…it’s the Polar Vortex.”)  I thought to myself, I have completed many studies of the Arctic and Antarctic as well as meteorology, and I never came across any mention of a polar vortex.  Surely, this is another one of those pseudo-scientific explanations that do not come from GOD, and are not intended to build upon, encourage, or reinforce faith—or a genuine love of the earth as our home, and our inheritance.

 

A Blazing Heart:  Valentine’s Day, 2014 

 

I saw the hawk in flight before the snow
That elephant fat and ivory white
Invaded neighborhoods and water holes
The cold of winter savannah grass a graveyard
And had I fled the beauty that we suffer
Would have melted away in an instant

My tears instead were for a love I lost
The missing her the smothering of frost
The breath I needed to make my wings lift high
When warm air streams made impotent and dry
The land locked jumbo jets again too slow
Made me see again that none are free to fly

Should doubt or fear be master lion fierce
The tenderness of kisses do not pierce
Or penetrate the wall’s defense
And wisdom gone there is no penitence
That shovels away the cuts when we are gored
That comes by seeing others in their joy

Not envious and yet not warmed as when
We easy join and soar our hips in rhythm
Our hearts ablaze by the fire of our need
For one another fed at first with kindling
then with logs of truth not sad for him
I know that he has flown to where his love is

 

 

©Michael Andrew Williams, 2014.  All rights reserved worldwide.

As for every poem I write, readers must now engage the piece, and come to know it.  The poem must rise or fall, speak for itself, and stand in its own merit.  As author, my final words must be (at the risk of sounding like Pontius Pilate), What is written is what is written.  Even so, I trust this fragment will be useful.  Be it unto you according to your faith.


A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.  By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.  (John 13:  34-35, KJV)


THE BLACK PHOENIX
Washington, DC