July 8: Unconditional Love, Tracy K. Smith, "Song"

Sometimes, I don't think that I'm a very nice person.  I can be grouchy and impatient.  Snappish.  Especially when I am dealing with a problem that keeps happening over and over.  At that point, I tend to step up on my soapbox and deliver a sermon.  My kids hate it.  My wife isn't too fond of it, either.

I'm not an easy person to love, and yet people love me.  That's amazing to me.  But that's all part of the deal, I guess.  True love is unconditional, despite flaws and idiosyncrasies.

Saint Marty is pretty lucky to have unconditional love in his life.

Song

by:  Tracy K. Smith

I think of your hands all those years ago,
Learning to maneuver a pencil, or struggling
To fasten a coat.  The hands you'd sit on in class,
The nails you chewed absently.  The clumsy authority
With which they'd sail to the air when they knew
You knew the answer.  I think of them lying empty
At night, of the fingers wrangling something
From your nose, or buried in the cave of your ear.
All the things they did cautiously, pointedly,
Obedient to the suddenest whim.  Their shames.
How they failed.  What they won't forget year after year.
Or now.  Resting on the wheel or the edge of your knee.
I am trying to decide what they feel when they wake up
And discover my body is near.  Before touch.
Pushing off the ledge of the easy quiet dancing between us.