My Sole Defense

In the end I shall be judged on love alone.

Love stands alone, my sole defense; The one

Criterion that matters, the moments in

And yet still out of time. Moments spent

In rapt awareness of the ineffable other,

In the museum, library, movies or a play;

In quiet nights wrapped up in loving arms;

In moments of extreme and total effort;

In the last expenditure of self, no longer

Able to remember that the self exists at all.

The far too rare moment of total gift

Of everything that moment has given me.

The self-forgetful, self-effacing moment,

The end and death of self. The self-intention,

Self-deceit and self-determination,

Self-absorption, attention, awareness… Slain

Swallowed up in a moment of otherly love.

Holy moments, moments scattered far

And wide across the night sky of my soul,

The general nothingness of self, gazing at self

With inward growing eyes, blackening the sky.

(Or perhaps the blackness of eyelids screwed

Tight shut against the bursting light of dawn?)

Regardless, when I stand before the Judge

Naked, with sins piled heavy on my back

In that moment I shall not plead innocence

For, of course, I have none. My sole defense

Will be the few, the few, the far too few moments

Of Love (not mine) that I was empty enough to receive.