Contemplation
Composed in two drafts between January 18 and January 21, 2014
I was thinking how you rise and fall
In time like breathing in and out
Half-conscious of repeating flesh-incarceration’s
Ceaseless sequencing like thought’s alacrity
In apprehending even its own absence
Or like being caught in time and sin and love
And seeing no escape from any one of these
Save suicide in one form or the other.
I was thinking how I should have known
That what you said to silence was your own
And cannot therefore be repeated
Though it is re-membered in and by
Each breathing’s briefest momentary pause
That so-soon dissolves unapprehended
Like a grain of salt dropped in the sea.
I was thinking what I want to be
Is my self loved by you and yours by me
And how this is already
How I see the providential hand in everything
Love breast-breathes into being giving place
In brokenness to over-whelming grace.
Minor edit on 11/15/2025 to add the missing full-stop at the end of the first stanza
One of my very favourites (and the only of my poems which I happen to know someone has memorized—the only true way to under-stand a poem and a profoundly flattering gesture)—I had been saving it up for some time and decided to share it at long last.
If you happen to like it yourself, you could consider whether you might want to