AUTUMN LOVE
Yesterday, across a table, I saw a man and woman
enamored with each other...like my Love and me, when we first met about a year
ago, in the autumn of our days. It
was during class at Gordon College Theological Seminary that I spoke to the
Minister and his wife, a Counselor.
My husband is an Ordained Minister and I am a Psychiatric Nurse
Clinician. How profoundly similar
our circumstances are!
Their silence breathed passion in that moment. I was silenced. This woman wears my contentment in her
eyes – my joy in her smile. This
gazing into each other’s eyes, this gift sculpted by the Almighty is all grace,
all tender mercy, all loving-kindness at last realized in the gentle look of
love. “ How absolutely dear of you Lord, to grant me a glimpse of what my
husband and I must look like to others in our midst.”
He touched her hand as though he were touching a
porcelain doll: after all, is she not his living Armani figurine dancing atop
the music box of life? They found
each other in God’s time, not their own time...this love...this splendid
love. Now, I know the tender,
eloquent look of Love’s lovely autumn love.
I gave a copy of the above in
poetry form to a couple in the Gordon-Conwell Workshop: my daughter, Jill and I attended a
writing workshop there for a week in 2006. The man was a Minister and his wife was a Social
Worker. Our career paths as
well as the time of our marriages were incredibly similar…Jim and--Marie were so happy to receive the poem.
Autumn Love
Yesterday
Across a table
A man and woman
Enamored with each other
Like my Love and me in the autumn
of our years
This woman wears my contentment in her eyes
My joy in her smile
He is her long-awaited love-gift
–and she his.
Her husband touches her ever so gently, lovingly
As though she were a porcelain doll
Their eyes meet
Their smiles greet…
It’s first-love in autumn-time
splendor
Now I know
How tender the eloquent look
Of Love’s lovely
Autumn love
© October 2012
Mrs. Vincent Castagna
Thank you, Lord, for turning my
mourning into dancing, for strengthening me through my times of tribulation,
for loving me through life’s raging storms. You are truly an amazing God, with amazing power to help us
endure and to bring us the victory in your glorious name.