A Retraction of a Former Prayer

I know I proclaimed it. I know I prayed it – that I did not want to fall in love anymore. My heart just had no more room.

From my living room window, I watch each day’s sun set. This is no artist’s view – houses and trees in the way. Still I am romanced. And I know how cliché it is to write love poems to each one, but I do not want to stop falling in love with sunsets. Just because it’s been done – day after day, person after person, for millennia. I do not want to stop being seduced by the slow melt of yellow into orange, the joyous dance of pink and purple, the deepening of blue to black, the swallowing darkness of rest.

A sunset as viewed from the writer's back yard

I do not want to stop falling in love.

I watch a squirrel go tunneling through the snow, tossing bits in the air. I do not want to stop falling in love.

I watch a hawk survey my backyard. I hear the crows fill the silence. The buzzards too, circle, holy in their duty. I do not want to stop falling in love.

I do not want to stop gasping when I see a cardinal or when I notice the hum of the bees on the clover. I do not want to stop obeying the storm clouds, the wind, and the ice. I do not want to stop noticing the changes in the sky or how at night, on a full moon, the snow broadcasts light everywhere.

My neighbors are yelling and singing and gardening and mowing and blowing leaves. I do not want to stop falling in love.

My time will soon be up, and a generation after that no one will know me. I do not want to stop falling in love.

I do not want to stop crying over cats and roadkill and feathers by the lake. I do not want to stop laughing when I fall down, and I do not want to stop falling in love.

I once stood in a sanctuary and belonged, but out on the street, Christ called to me from a third-story window. She sang a hymn of greeting to me, and I was saved.

“You do not want to stop falling in love.”

When the flood came to our house, and when the drought took our well, and when I screamed for help in the emergency room, and when in my hallway I doubled over sobbing in fear, and when I was crying, and when I was happy, and when I was praising, and when I was lamenting, and when I was falling –

Love was falling back with me.

Forgive me. I do not want to stop.

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