Offerings Born

To love someone deeply gives you strength.
Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.
~ Lao-Tzu

Where love stands, twofold offerings are born
And both arrive like softly whispered truths
As night leans, spent and tender, into morn
And dawn declares a certainty which soothes...

For love is hope-on-fire: joy alive
And strength the gift which, unexpected, comes
As something sure and anchored, uncontrived
When one, completed, yielding, succumbs

To opening the self, the soul laid bare
Exposed as ne’er before and small, afraid,
Yet nothing, now, can harm or even scare
For courage is the gift of love repaid.

So love, and worry not of circumstance
And give beyond the boundaries of space
Amazed are you by life’s undying dance
And ever shall you bear its blissful grace.

16 lines