I was newly in love,

And did not know how to tell her,

So my clumsiness made her cry.

I confessed my heart and made her see,

The depth of my emotion.

But secretly I whipped myself,

Haunted by the jagged notion,

I had caused a tender woman to weep.



Then we drank from the blue bottle,

And in a labored whisper,

With caution as a nervous throttle,

And a sorrow she could no longer keep,

She put an ingrained fear on the shelf,

Did not question why,

And simply revealed to me,

From shards she had sown,

The greatest pain she had known.

She, like me, has no recourse from above,

But on that day, she started on her way,

To recovering the spirit of her soul,

And understanding that she must self forgive.

Because in her desperate hour,

She lacked the power,

To justly judge the path to take.

For years and years, the tyranny of mistake,

In thinking she had freely selected,

An act she could not have expected,

To transcend with wisdom matured,

Had not let her love herself or admire,

The purity of fire,

That in the canyons of her being endured.

Now wine from the bottle of blue,

And the gentle urging I could do,

Have cast a clearer light,

On the torment of her plight,

And helped her to find,

The justice of mind,

To see, that in her blackest travail,

Still she did not fail,

To grace the world with love.

For the true measure of spirit,

Can only be found,

When a soul, knowledgeable and free,

Strikes a mark on the ground,

And declares immutably explicit,

On this side, unmoved, you shall find me.