THE BEST WE CAN DO

when the words fail--
as they must
--when actions
are misinterpreted--
as they will be;
when the self's estrangement
and isolation
from the self
becomes your most familiar
acknowledgement,
we will leap
upon the other
with abandonment.
Each soul
grows hungry
with exaggeration
of their wholeness.
And each holy utterance
in the darkness
shearing the spirit
in two
is really silence
in the ears
of a deaf
God.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2014