THE PLEA
A Reply in Verse to Mary Oliver's "THE GIFT"
THE GIFT1
by Mary Oliver
Be still, my soul, and steadfast. Earth and heaven both are still watching though time is draining from the clock and your walk, that was confident and quick, has become slow. So, be slow if you must, but let the heart still play its true part. Love still as once you loved, deeply and without patience. Let God and the world know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.
THE PLEA
by Michael D. Warden
But where does your heart go when love fails? What part ought it play when, as far as you can tell, heaven no longer kisses the earth, and whatever joy it once found in common wonders—the way the sun makes diamonds on the lake, the way the flowers kiss the air, the infinite portal in the eye of a doe—are all lost to you, consumed like delicate arias in the fevered roar of human greed, and God is lost somewhere in the bitterness of the everything that men have made? That I could love as I once loved, deeply and without patience, is no dreamy sentiment for me now. It is a cry, a plea, a desperate grasping for an all but forgotten grace I no longer see on the Earth. Pray for me, Mary, that I may be found faithful to the good true beautiful things, as you were to the holiness of the flowers and the ponds and the eyes of the mystic deer whom we both know were the eyes of God. Pray that even if the whole world falls and the hearts of all men everywhere succumb to selfishness and hate, that I will still, quietly, every morning, set myself ablaze with love, impatiently burn to give this gift, like a candle calling to the dawn, like a signal fire summoning heaven's swift and sure return.






Yes. May we all keep the burn fresh. May we give this gift the wonder of seeing. Seeing earth through heaven's eyes and heaven return within earth. May we love deeply, without reserve, in wonder and with abandon ~ every day washed fresh and new.
So freaking good. And by that I mean it put words to the unbearable task of love in the now present world. Thank you!