For the lovers
Poem by Sydney Searchwell-Simpson
FEATURED SELECTION FROM OUR SPRING 2025 OPEN CALL
poetry is a noticing
an intimacy large enough
to recognize presence and absence
the words reaching
as my wanting hands did this morning
parched and filling with the impossible desire
to give name to the Unnameable
moments that shape our brief existence
and awaken us
like the absence of the warmth of my lover
and the memory of their presence
to the inevitability of the miraculous
the certainty I once held
and will hold evermore
to the wondrous works of God
____
As a lover of the Beloved,
I will seek and know God
where the discards and disposed
rest in the forced makings of shame
I will honour Their limitlessness
in the paths -
what grace -
we all take to know Them
I will know the Sacred in the meeting of our breath
bone
blood
in the deliverance of your touch
the revelation seeded in this devotional act
in our surrender to an impossible yearning
in the rapture of being possessed by something so holy
all words return to dust at the foot of a glorious kingdom
as our bodies
who have now known the bliss of Oneness
resolve themselves
in the sweetened sanctuary of
Divine grace
giving praise
for all the ways
in which we can experience God
— Sydney Searchwell-Simpson