However long. . . .

Coming into a chosen family will be what someone will call a misfit.  And the label will stick.  This often is a child with a need to know everything and talk.   There will not be anyone to listen.  Because there will be other children, work to do, buses to catch, and excuses given on the spur of the moment.

I don’t have time to listen will be the mantra.  And the child grows to be adult with the need still unfulfilled.  Because in the course of life, there will be work and school, meetings and planes to catch and television.  Now of course we add hand held devices.

The need continues in those born with the desire to learn and talk but there is no matching soul with a similar need. The sweet hours of the night are filled with the best conversations, though silent they be.  No matter the fatigue of the soul, the mind conversations are filled with wonder and appreciation.

I awoke with the words, however long the night is,  and wondered perhaps I read them someplace.  Years of research never found them anywhere.  It proved to me again,  that we are not abandoned.    It is included in Psalms of Love. . .   get it for the one you love. . . .

However long. . . .

However long the night is,
is however long we’ll talk.
A tongue dismembered from its throat
is punishment too severe to be humane.

It has taken a life of silence
to filter through its members;
lessons enough for the toughest skin to break.

I have marched with your words
through endless tasks,
through nights not filled with magic.
And heard the harangue from compressed lips
tearing even the plea of forgiveness from Me.

Now I promise.
In the stillness of the life you know
I will come for you. In the light of the night
I will make my way
and no walls will bar my entry.

I will sit the night and across the table
a hand will clasp the one you call your own.
And in the magic of words spoken
I will listen to the story built
to house lives of wonder.

It has taken too long.

And we, the each, will speak and listen
and as the words flow like rivers
toward their delta, in ribbons of courage,
we will stay the night.

And however long the night is,
is however long we’ll talk.
July 1987

 

(photo by John Holmes)