some prose made into a poem

all hail the return of romantic love 




   rooted in the intuition of the divine                           

To be in love is to be in love with someone.

To be in love without qualifications or conditions
or reservations or limits

is to be in love with someone transcendent.

When someone transcendent is my beloved,

he is in my heart, real to me from within me.

When that love is the fulfillment
 of my unrestricted thrust to self-transcendence

through intelligence and truth and responsibility,

the one that fulfills that thrust must be supreme
 in intelligence, truth, goodness.

Since he chooses to come to me by a gift of love for him,

he himself must be love.

Since loving him is my transcending myself,

it also is a denial of the self to be transcended.

Since loving him means loving attention to him,

it is prayer, meditation, contemplation.

Since love of him is fruitful,

it overflows into love
of all those that he loves or might love.

Finally, from an experience of love focused on mystery

 there wells forth a longing for knowledge,

while love itself is a longing for union;

so for the lover of the unknown beloved the concept of bliss

 is knowledge of him and union with him,

 however they may be achieved.

--Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology
















.....

summer sonnet

summer summer summertime sunshine sun
beams with burning brilliance- my skin turns brown
the dither of life buzzes and light beams down
and everything seems to run run run


a certain verdancy becomes the earth
a certain cacophony becomes air
where birds flit and sing their inherent care
yes we're poised again between death and birth


in every summer day there is a way
to see life as a thing eternal:  held
suspended in a summer poem,  held
in bated breath inspiring  a whole day
          until the sun goes down i'll sit and look
           and read the summer like  I read a book






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