Love’s Lonely Office

I listened to a podcast today about love. The speaker talked about the textures, nuances, complexities of love. It seems that the thing that is so necessary for a human soul to survive should come simpler and with cleaner lines.

True love that can rattle the bones and break a heart wide open can make us feel too tender, too vulnerable. Like somehow if we see it, offer it fully, step right into it and embrace it we will turn to jelly and disappear. Maybe we unknowingly close our eyes, resist love, and then cry because we do not see those who love us. And maybe we cry because the love we offer isn’t seen either. . .because our missteps and mistakes make the love we offer the world harder to see so it sits in its lonely office.

This poem, about love, is like love. It has texture and nuance and complexity. I hope it speaks to you today in some meaningful way.

In honor of Black History month, Robert Hayden was the first African American to fill the role of poetry consultant to the Library of Congress which he was appointed to in 1976, a role now known as poet laureate.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

By Robert Hayden

Reflection offered by Cherie Shaw, CPE Intern