It feels like nothing is there.
No feelings,
No tender thoughts,
No love.
Like the undead,
You are unable to love.
People who can’t feel love
Can’t get enough love.
No matter how much love
Others are pouring in--
All disappearing through
The infinite abyss [1]
Left by the absence of God
In the frozen heart.
Nature abhors a vacuum.[2]
If you let things other than love
Fill that void,
It’s like pouring steamy hot water
Over ice in a cold glass--
The ice crackles;
The glass breaks
Into a million sharp shards
That cut deeply
Into the tender, thawing heart--
Ripping it to shreds again,
Too fragmented to feel anything.
Or try to thaw it in a microwave,
Too fast,
Too many waves bouncing around
And the heart turns out
Tough and half-cooked.
But God, if you ask Him,
Will gently fill that void
Bit by bit,
Carefully thawing the heart
At just the right time
And just the right temperature
So that it turns out tender and sweet.
It takes patience
To thaw a frozen heart.
© L.F. Haynie 4/26/2015
[1] Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425)
[2] Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book 4, Ch 4.LXII