What life is this?
What hope and what death
and what desire?

What of any of it can I know?

It is human nature
to take the unspeakable
and speak of it,
to take the unnameable
and name it.
Reduction is a game we play,
a line drawn,
a list made,
a story told.

We are reductionists.

And what is love?
Is love a reduction
or something other?
And what lives within love,
what event shimmers there?

I have heard many things.

I have heard chaos
is a butterfly,
and war is a success of death.
But you don’t need war
for death to succeed.

What do I know anyway?
I do not know butterflies,
not really,
but I do know death,
I do know that.

I also know love.

And I know this too: When we have love
we have more than knowledge can ever reveal.

So I live by the grace of God
in the place between,
where the earth and heavens meet,
where I can say the words
“I love you”
but I cannot name the event
that is love
for it remains, as always
unnameable