Somewhere I mentioned a poem...

In some blog or another I mentioned a poem that would explain whatever I was writing about better than I was doing. Right now, I don't remember much about what I was saying in that post, but I have found the poem!

(Which reminds me of what Robert Browning said to a woman at a party that asked him what a particular line in one of his poems meant: "When I wrote that, madam," he said, "only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant....Now, only God knows....)

So, for what it's worth, here's the poem I couldn't find that day when I was writing about what only God knows now....

SONG TO MY OTHER SELF

Over the years I have caught glimpses of you
in the mirror, wicked;
in a sudden stridency of my own voice, hav
heard you mock me;
in the tightening of my muscles, felt the pull
of your anger and the whine 
of your greed twist my countenance, felt your
indifference blank my face when pity was called for.
You are there, lurking under every kind act I do,
ready to defeat me.

Lately, rather than drop the lid of my shock
over your intrusion,
I have looked for you with new eyes
opened to your tricks, but more,
opened to your rootedness in life.
Come, I open my arms to you, once dread stranger.
Come, as a friend I would welcome you to stretch your apartments
within me from the cramped to comforting size.
Thus I would disarm you. For I have recently learned,
learned looking straight into your eyes:
The Holiness of God is everywhere.

--Elsie Landstrom