! In The Spirit Of Rumi - 47 - A Confession Of Love Withheld Poem by Michael Shepherd

Now with surprise and sadness, I have realised–
I do not love you as much as I thought…

When you are beside me
in the bed when I awake
I whisper with my waking breath
to your open or your sleeping eyes,
‘I love you’…and in that,
I find myself…

But when you are far away
my first involuntary waking thought
is not of you, or love, or God
Who guided me through the night,
Who taught me to enjoy
His great invention, sleep…
but of myself…
myself and world as two
and I am lost to myself…

and know, I have not yet
surrendered all my mind and will
to God…

O My Beloved
how can I love you fully, as God loves, when
I do not yet see God
in every waking moment
in myself?