The Naked Troubadour

The Evidence of Love in Grace [poem]

Posted on Jun 26, 2017

The more my years have multiplied,
the more I’ve come to realise
that even more important
than mere love
is grace.

For love is soon misunderstood
misused abused and trampled on
and has as many meanings as
its theatre actors choose to give,
who live by their escapist dreams,
believing pheromones, it seems,
and so much wanting to be loved
that they will heed whatever words
some cad will whisper in their ear
(for almost everything is ruled
by fear of death, abandonment —
which are the warp and woof of
all that stands between ourselves
and evidence of love through grace).

And love can easily be faked
with bonhomie & smarmy smiles
and unctuously proffered gifts,
deceptive claims and wily guiles
(for almost everyone’s a hypocrite
and well-defended baggage king
or queen when love is in-between
2 people who believe in anything
they’re told which fits their ego’s
centripetal pigeonholed pretences).

But grace cannot be substituted,
faked as counterfeit or shammed.
Unlike the clichéd crazed persona
claimed as “love” upon this fallen
sphere, grace can only be itself,
with elegance & poise, refinement
(and a natural attraction to the bone-
revealing nature of the skein of truth),
mercy, charity, benevolence & ease
which never stoops to merely being
pleasing to the fickle hankerings
of faithless men and women’s
instability, juvenility and lack of
inward/outwardsome tranquillity.

For love can only show if it is true
by evidence that’s irrefutable;
and this is where the beautiness
of grace has made its home, for
grace becomes the glue which binds
the heart of love in me and you.

Thus, grace is evidence of love which,
like the wind, cannot be shown as true
except by its effects on all around —
moving over ground and sanctifying all
who will absorb its otherworldly flow.
For grace is a contagion which affects
the heart on which it works, provided
that the heart is open to the breeze
and — like the wind moves branches
on the trees — those humans who
are moved by grace’s flow will find
that grace’s pulchritude will grow,
for grace’s garden has a loamy soil
made of love where fireflies glow.

© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2017