Commandment

I can feel the weight of you pressing me down

I keep telling you:

Poetry doesn’t live on the page, it lives in the air

Like the flowers in your garden

That rise in the morning and fade by evening

turning brown and twisted

Pressing me down through the earth

Seeking the roots where life begins

Where the soil is dark and fragrant between your fingers

God commands me to love, even when it’s so hard

Even when I can’t understand the meaning of it all

Even when the plans fly into the towers

Even when the terrorists rape and kill

Even when the bombs fall on the children

sleeping in their beds.

He commands me to love the people I want to hate

I feel his silent judgement through space and time

We’re guaranteed nothing

And the reward is just strands of light

filtered through the leaves.

We grasp and cling and hang on to each other as though

We are but flowers that rise in the morning

And fade by the evening.

The weight presses me down through the ground

down to where life begins

He commands me to love the beginning

and the end

and all the messy bits between

He commands me to love but spares me understanding

The weight pushing me down

where it’s dark and fragrant,

The soil crumbling beneath my fingers.

I return to molecules, then into atoms,

finally, particles of light

that spin away becoming

some new world in his vast universe.