The Sacrament of Love
There were days of youth
When the union of love
signaled the sacred moment
When love became eternal
in the records transcending time.
There is, we are told,
No marrying or giving,
In marriage in heaven.
There the customs of earth
Are gone, no longer obtaining.
Nevertheless, that which time
has brought forth remains
In some mysterious sense
Intact in heaven,
Never to be undone.
There, under the Eastern Gate,
We shall in God’s morning
Once again be united,
Again embracing in remembrance
Of earth’s festival of love.
But now our relations are more ethereal,
Spiritualized, indeed, as each
Gazes upon the face of the other,
Each clothed in glistening raiments of white,
Amazed at the beauty that only heaven yields.
In earth the order of transience holds,
So that in the joy that marriage brings
There is the murmur telling us
That it shall not always be so,
That as the flower of the field fades,
So the flower of love shall also fade.
As the sacred union bows
To the ravishes of earth’s time,
In heaven those ravishes are suspended,
And once again those whom earth separated,
Are reunited more truly than earth can yield.
Copyright © 2012 by J. Prescott Johnson