On Separation of Life and Love

[This post is dedicated to my sister-in-law whose father died a year ago this week. This poem was written many years ago when he was on his deathbed. Through God’s mercy He granted him several more years to spend with his family. It is my prayer that God provides her and her mother solace and comfort on the anniversary of his death.]

I can sense your sunken heart
And see your drowning eyes
Time joins in my witness
Of your hope dying
As faith seems a far off land
You have no strength to travel to.

The clouds of midnight
Are the only beautiful thing
In your life now
And even if you wanted to,
You wouldn’t know how
To cry out from
Or climb out of
This pit of despair you are in.

Where are you?
What has life become?
Vain in efforts
Empty of continuance
Whose demands
Must you hold onto?

Who do you run to?
Indeed, how do you run
When your legs have given out
And your prayers are so few?

As you fight
The words of comfort offered
Ignoring the sounds
Of easy answers
And trivial questions
Even as you lay down
It is another battle,
Another night
Of being tucked in by insomnia.

Everything you were
Ever secure in comes to mind
And then flees
Even faster than you can
Grasp for its coattails
You question why
Time cannot sit still
And ponder what it will finally avail.

You ask for but one more moment,
Not to find yourself or your will,
But the memory
You always wanted to make,
The one you were to be so enthralled by
Where you can show
A love beyond yourself
And you were always meant to provide.

Just where is the Author?
The One Who brought you together
Who chose you as gifts
For each other.
Does He give and take away?
Surely He hasn’t run out of grace.
Exactly what is lurking
Behind His eyes?
What fills His mind?
Is His hand full of the miracle needed
Or empty of everything
But watching one reaping
What they have sown?

You can’t help but wonder:
Which way will His hand turn
And exactly what my heart will learn.
How much will we be torn?
I’m not so sure I want to know
What truths will be born
From this separation
Of life and love.
I know we can’t own each other
But my heart has always belonged to you
And now that ever is upon us
I pray with all longing and love
That you have seen,
And will never fail to remember
The proof.