A Meeting of Souls

The ancients knew

A space that opens

Between us, to which

Like branches

Material laws bend.

Intimate, interpenetrating

In the face of which

Your scent, even lovemaking

Is distance upon distance.

This is the way

The ancients entered

The Kingdom,

Here on Earth.

To have a taste

Of this, made of them

Beggars, wanderers

Ascetics, prophets

And lunatics,

At once holy

And desperate.

Was Jesus not

The most desperate

Of them all?

Break free!

Show me what he felt

Before that sudden encounter

That like a lightning bolt

Stole him away

I have no other way

To explain myself

Drunk, just from smelling

The wine that Jesus

Drank and shared

I was sixteen

When it happened

Still unsure what but

I’m certain it did

Everything changed

In an instant,

Now nothing’s the same.

I’m all stirred up, thirsty

With an aching depth

That keeps revealing

God’s bottomless mystery.