All That Shatters Is Not Glass Poem by Pamela Ascroft

ALL THAT SHATTERS IS NOT GLASS

There is a grace in the flow of life when souls meet.
No heralds, not a single strain of violins-
Only-I know.
Only-Me too.
Only-Yes.

Matters of matter no longer matter.
We live in the centre of passion's flame,
In its white-hot consumption forging the bonds of spirit and limb forever.
Forever….
Then….for never.

Tragedy marks the rendering of a love and runs the colors together
Like tears blur watercolor on cheap canvas.
Voluptuous red-hued blue-lit beauty now a muddied stain of betrayal
Spreading out from the prone soul lying in the nothingness of abandonment.

There is no cross on Calvary.
Only-I believed.
Only-I did not.
Only-No.

Moments are forever, several lifetimes in one existence.
A marriage can begin and end in the span of one kiss.
(Or perpetuate in a fifty year mutual conspiracy of death by disassociation-
We squeeze our eyes tightly shut and thrust out our hands to ward off the unbearable.)

Truth does exist in the crucible of romantic communion.
But only a spirit nurtured from within has eyes to see its own completion.
The compulsions to survive propels; damaged souls limp onwards,
Dispelling the well of emptiness in the joys of meetings and partings.

Words and music and prairie wild flowers, salt-sea spray
Penetrate the dark chambers of the embattled heart-
It opens now to the loving touch of deep kinship, to contentment;
No life-and-death-gasping-for-air need.

Only-I'm wiser.
Only-I understand.
Only-Perhaps.

What was lives, what is lives-
Because we live.