Otherness

Hello, struggler, wisher, thirster-

I meet you at the well to wonder,

to ponder, and possibly to fight for

what it is to be alive.

Both of us are drinking from the same cistern.

We created it; the cracks refused to seal

and the water refused to heal our parched souls.

Goodness knows we have looked in all those cracks

for answers and heard enough echoes

to reassure us we are alone.

But what of the music that we didn't make?

We hear it shake the ground sometimes

and we analyze the sounds that aren't our own.

O great unknown, you sing to us

and call to us in open roads 

and feather-leafed mesquite groves

and in places that are kind or bleak to us-

you are deeper than our well goes.

O Otherness beyond our echoes,

you have a voice that fills us

in the emptiness of subway halls

and other people's flawless love.

Mend our cisterns! we cry,

and you reply,

Leave them dry. I will supply parched lips

with my munificence and drench

you in my providence.

O holy Christ, your voice is stronger

than the torrents tempting us to take

the earthy waters; human potters mold more vessels

but you call us-

like a wave: one but recurring.

Beyond words, beyond our singing

you are matchless:

to have tasted of your depth

is to know Already and Not Yet

and greater love and greater debt.