Into the Width and Depth of You

My Love, in the times of my deep and most terrible sadness,

In those nights I stood beneath the crushing weight of that abyss,

I found you there with me, burning fiercer than any fire,

Cutting sharp as knives, the bloody things surrounding me

Like wolves with teeth bared, snapping and circling.

Like air in the lungs of a dying man, I found your voice

Speaking love into my heart. You breathed so gently

Into the deepest parts of me, into the parts I had forgotten,

Into the places I thought locked and sealed away forever.

You spoke your love into the closed tomb of my life

And that is the song of wonder I heard crashing into that darkness;

That is the joy that filled me like a cold cistern in the rock

And freed the words that had been lying there, burning

To be spoken with all my life. Those chains of fear and sadness

Broke beneath the pure and deep veined love of your heart

And this is how I know, beyond the shadow of any doubt,

That magic yet lives and breathes, alive and walking in the world of flesh,

For love is the deepest and most sacred magic of all,

One cast without incantation or spell, spoken without words,

But powerful, stronger than steel and gentler than new mother’s milk.

I lay claim to the magic of your love forever, but not as one who owns,

Rather, in the way the rain claims the sky and the sun that rides there

Or as the bond-servant who would own no other master,

For he who loves truly is first a servant to his beloved, all other claims last,

Whether king or queen, whether rich or poor, the strong and the weak alike.

And so I push deep and deeper into the width and depth of you,

Into your stillness and peace, into the heart of your love like a forest

And find myself growing there, thick and wild and free in the sunlight.

I walk toward you softly, tenderly, touching the smooth edges of you,

Finding you deep in the heart of all my visions, all my dreams, all my life

And I am filled and finished, in you I am happy and well content.

Eric M. Petit