Love Is Easier

Love Is Easier

(“No one pours new wine into old wineskins.” Luke 5:37a)

Love is so much easier than
reading from the scripts winding in your head
like chains and locks, like handcuffs and square knots.

There are more than the old, scribbled writings,
life is richer than the ransom notes we send
human after human,
year after year,
sermon after sermon,
election after election.

Joy flows if you will find it,
the grapes burst with sun and earth.
The wine brings color to the cheeks and
brightness to the eyes. Why protest
the radiance that
sets the bluebirds flying?

Love, rain on me here.
Joy, shine early and near.

On a planet, bio-diverse, sing the choruses
that list each divergent tongue as the number one,
the melodies that launch embraces instead of
vacuous mumbles repeated for effect.
There are far more faces than fit within your
narrow theology.

Love is easy. Love is wind and rain
and wine and mud. Love is never asking for
a decision or,
holding unknown soundwaves in derision,
shouting louder than the spectrum you think you
invented.

Love, fill us like daysprings.
Joy, etch our faces like newborns.
Love is easier if
we take the time to share new wine
trampled by feet we never knew.