After Annelyse Gelman, “How to Pray”
It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us – else what use is love at all?
- Oscar Wilde, “An Ideal Husband”
Bless the missteps, the stumbles, the chances lost
Bless the heaviness
The memory of those things brings
Bless friendship abandoned
Love unrequited or forsaken
Opportunity squandered
The gentle Spaniard
With eyes of softest brown
Whose hands you held and lips you kissed
On the Peace March
in Nicaragua, 1990
Then lost at a rally
And never found again
The Dutch friend met in Ghana
Who said if you didn’t write her back this time
She wouldn’t write you again
And why, oh why, did you not?
The number a friend gave you
In your solo performance days
For a major presenter
He was sure would be intrigued by your work
And the prestigious director
who handed you his card
Bless those times you sat by the phone
Those numbers in your hand
Dialed and hung up
And dialed
And hung up again
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