Sacrifice Poem by Joseph Martin III

You can never know love until you allow another entry into the
very passages of your soul. You must let them in or else love
becomes a dry dusty book filled with memory and empty words.
Your love will become barren and lifeless, though many of the
world will tolerate such a cold hollow love. The truest of love is
such a rare find and thirsty men will drink dirty water if that is all
that is offered. You can even lie to yourself and say your dirty
water is really from a cool pure stream, but when the day comes
and you find another who knows lie from truth, illusion from
reality, then you will find yourself in confusion and pain. You
say you want love that is complete and whole, but are you
prepared for such a path? Are you ready to accept the
responsibility for the care and protection of another's heart, their
soul, and to unflinchingly entrust your own to their care? Will
you lay yourself inside the temple, before the altar, giving all that
you have been, all that you are, and all that you will ever be?
Will you last through the uncertainty, the doubt, the
self-destructive voices in your own heart that scream out that
you are neither worthy of giving nor receiving such a beautiful
gift?

What shall be the reward for your offering?

For when the gift is shared between two people, then, even in
death, their sorrow shall find comfort in the fact there was no
business left unfinished, no words left unspoken, for their love
revealed in every word and action. There will be nothing more
to want or need in this life.

8/30/2002 rev 8/27/2005