My Wedding Stuff - 3. Two Psalms

Two Psalms

Note: I include these here because I happened to write them on March 8^th, 1992. Later that very same day – at about 8:30 pm – I met my husband. It was love at first sight for both of us.

Psalm

Lord, make me one of mind and memory

blind all that sees not love

stomp out all in me

that might spread contempt.

Lord grant me recall every subtle form

of how my apathy did hate

when nothing made contempt its better;

that I remember I had eyes

but no soul to see

hands to make

but not heart to create.

Lord, make me one with now and then

that every careless hurt I gave

returns to the truth about me.

Make me one with the hate I had

that love might make me whole again.

Make me one of mind and memory.

°                        °                        °      

Psalm

Rend all from me that is

not love;

that see not love, that thinks not,

that feels not, in all that is.

A year or two goes by

and growth is newly threatened

by the strategy of an absent mind;

this struggle finds me yet tonight

though in this I take solace.

Divide away again and again

all that makes me not but one;

in the void of what I was

contract to build its better

with these simple terms.

Rend all from me that is

not love;

that sees not love, that thinks not,

that finds not, in all that is.