“love survives our thirst”

Thinking of this gorgeous Wendell Berry poem this morning…

I’ve shared his words with you so many times and I don’t believe I shall ever stop — for his words are always new to me, always speaking, always fresh. I open those pages and my heart is ripped open again and again.

So beautiful, so very, very painfully beautiful.

(From The Country of Marriage, by Wendell Berry)

What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

In all forms of love, may we always be thirsty for one another and find uncommon joy in our depths.

[photo credit here]