Now you endeavor to gather yourself and withdraw in slow animal woundedness from love turned sour and ungentle.

When we love, the depth in us trusts itself forward until the empty space between becomes gradually woven into an embrace where longing can close its weary eyes.

Love can seldom end clean; for all the tissue is torn and each lover turned stranger is dropped into a ruin of distance where emptiness is young and fierce.

Time becomes strange and slipshod; it mists memories that felt the kiss of the eternal with the blistering hurt of now.

Unknown to themselves, certain small things touch nerve-lines to the heart and bring back with color and force all that is utterly lost.

This is the time to be slow, lie low to the wall until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let the wire brush of doubt scrape from your heart all sense of yourself and your hesitant light.

IF you remain generous, time will come good; and you will find your feet again on fresh pastures of promise, where the air will be kind and blushed with beginning.