Affirmation in a poem by Derek Wolcott

A while back, someone posted this poem to an internet account. I can't remember if it contained the name of the poet or not. I had a hard time tracking down the exact name of the poem, however. While some poems of this sort seem overblown or self-absorbed, this one has always felt "just right" to me, infused with the expansive spirit and intimate relating of the best of Rumi (in the translations I know, at least...).

I don't know Derek Wolcott. But this poem alone makes me want to for sure!

Enjoy. And may your life truly be a feast!!!

Love After Love

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

  - Derek Wolcott 

Practicing What I Preach

I had the distinct pleasure of sharing touch with two Sacred Intimate friends when I was in New York last weekend. I had not planned it into my schedule for the weekend; it was just a lovely confluence of interest and availability for the three of us. 

We each got forty minutes on the table and two pair of trained loving hands to help. We simply needed to ask for what we wanted.

I called it blissful. One of the others called it a slice of heaven. The third guy just made a lot of wonderful sounds, which was certainly good enough! In the midst of my bliss - the bliss of attending to two other wonderful men and the bliss of receiving from them - I was thinking of how long it had been since I had been with touch that was this attentive and caring. (I was really trying not to think about that and just be with the pleasure in the moment, but it kept coming back...) 

And the sad fact was, I couldn’t remember. 

I could remember when I last had “regular” body work, but this type of engagement without goal or payment other than sweetly giving and receiving was almost a year in the past. And I realized how strange this seemed for someone whose career is helping men realize the beauty of this very thing.

The fact is made stranger by the fact that my closest circle of friends all got to know one another through work with the Body Electric School. We talk about this specific approach to the body often and value what it gave to our lives and the changes in perspective that it engendered. We talk about the beauty of “erotic community”and what a positive thing it is. Yet we don’t practice these skills with one another. 

Lives get full. People date. People get partners. People continue and deepen friendships away from the things which brought them together in the first place.

Taking the time to connect in this way requires a kind of forethought and energy  that can be in short supply in busy lives. 

Through the time with my friends in New York, the unique type of power and caring available in these intimate sharing encounters was highlighted for me by their general absence in my life. I did write a note to my friends about this whole realization. I haven’t heard any responses yet. It did make me want to get a group of like-minded men together for this purpose, though. To be continued!