What Kind of Love is This?

A Poem by Dean

There are some guidelines
set by those who read and think,
those travelers through history
who watch the thoughts congeal--
the flash of Eros, Agape and loyalty
that churned within the minds
of sandaled sages long ago,

the ones who patiently
inscribed the words on scrolls
and left their readers breathless.
Poets scanned them;
philosophers began to see
that there was left far more
beneath the skins of time.

And then it was imagined
that eternity might somehow triumph
in a probe that could be aided
by someone who occupied
a mystic heaven, a god
much wiser than themselves.

Yes, he could fathom love.
But there were drawbacks,
for if that were so,
its opposite, an evil hate
must race with equal strength
across his hallowed mind.

It is not a love to foil the dark
with its very own device. No, it is more.
In all its flood, in all the intertwining
of complexity--the words embracing
unadorned desire on the road
from lust to sacrifice,
there are the timeless open arms
that score the universe,
that bridge the planets to the stars,
and finally will take us in
when we are weary of the battlefield,
and long for home.

I see it, over there!
There is no need, at last,
to count defining terms.
No maps, no guidelines may contaminate
its glory. If ever we may justify
the gods that we create,
it is to thank them, bow before
a truth we find incredible,
and then in turn extend
our own frail, mortal arms,
and share in its embrace.
~