Poem: Not by merit

*

It's not by merit
that I live.
By grace or by error -- not by right
I have what I have.

My worth
must be applied from outside --
rooted in the earth,
watered and fed

by one whose reflection
is what you see
when
you think you're seeing me --

the same one who shines
in you the same
way -- so we wear each other's reflections,
though we feel queasy inside them.

If we back away
from our being
kin -- if now we
seem bound by loathing,

that hatred
should in fact
be pointed
inward to the naked

self whose love
for you, that too
is of
the radiant one within you.

God's embodiment
is -- I don't know -- it is so humble,
so beautiful, so low -- I don't
know -- it is out of our control.

But how can people be
"hard to be with"
having the same being obscurely
underneath?

Such sickness in the news,
warmongers
so anxious
to break the mirrors

and deny that the God
who peers from an ugly face
might be their own God connected
to their own ugliness.

Suppose ugliness embraced
took on the semblance
of grace, suppose disgust
were self-directed violence,

suppose God not only was
but circulated
actively through the likes of us
unseen and unmerited,

would we change?
Would everything
become as strange
as our breathing?

If I woke would I give
you not my merit
but the real thing I have?
And would you accept it?

*