A honey drop succumbs to gravity
Then rests itself atop the surface of
Warm toast, to be drowned in a cavity
Of a human mouth filled with tea and love.
I do not want to keep on writing these
But I would be a scoundrel if I end.
This is the lot of us immortal priests
We who will love well on beyond our friends.
Beyond our own contemporaries or
Our children, those unnatural of us
Who live the full Lengths of our lives before
We go, have trouble with our knowing this:
The knowing that you're going to outlive
Your friends and so you accidentally
Will wait around for them to die, not live.
It's not my fault it is my destiny.
I try to not think of who's next a lot
But yet I do. And I won't tell you who.
I don't know who's next. But I know who's not.
And I know who is last. I really do.
My God what am I doing living still!
There are some people I have only met
After they've died. And some I met before
But only really got to know while dead.
I never will be lonely now, I guess.
Not once the rest have gone unto their rest.
The sweetness of this is the fleetingness
Of anything. But sweet it is, and blest.
YOU ARE READING
Chronicles of the Dark Night of the Soul
PoetryDark Night of the Soul is a classic piece of Christian literature. It discusses an experience that seems to come to all of us sooner or later. I wrote two response poems, and so I have posted the original, by St. John of the Cross, and the two re...
