Love Knows No Distance - a Poem by Mark Heffron (with sunset video)

Love Knows No Distance - a Poem by Mark Heffron (with sunset video)

Sunset over Lake Winnebago at the High Cliff State Park Harbor

Love Knows No Distance

The mother has buried her only child
     And grieves in his bedroom the long winter nights,
     Caressing his clothing and empty shoes.
     She feels his impression in the wale of the bedding
And sails the small lifeboat to a starry shore.
She follows his footprints where love knows no distance,
     As the child has followed the trail of her tears,
     And fashions a shelter where her heart has broken
To cradle his memory till love's resurrection.

The drunken man weaves through the streets of the harbor.
     He so loves the world that their eyes look away.
     So he talks to the ghosts who still answer his voice
With the laughter of children who play through the night.
At each echoing step their voices grow louder
     Till a small hand beckons from the moon-speckled bay
And takes him to rest where love knows no distance.

The pilgrim wanders from church to church
     Seeking the beloved who blesses his dreams.
     He sees her face in each morning's horizon.
In each chapel he finds her a steeple away.
He traces her form in the ocean of stars
     That flicker like distant harbor lights
     Calling the wayfaring stranger home.
When his eyes grow dark on a mid-winter's night
There a light still glistens like a frozen tear
     Wept at the altar of the loving Redemptress 
In the bright homecoming where love knows no distance.

In the coves where shadows kiss and whisper
     Sweet parables of the lovers' moon,
     The tide that weds their ecstasy
Soon ebbs to leave the barren sands.
Born from love and sentenced to death,
     Their ardor spills across seawalls of time.
     The sweet elixir that shines in their blood
Overflows the grail of their suffering.
When the heart's battered sails meet the reefs of death
     The invisible tide that guided their love
     Will seal their marriage in a timeless harbor
Where moon meets water and love knows no distance.

Whose face awaits you in the silent hour?
     Who else could rise but the ones you loved?
     The heart writes its story in every cell.
In the script's final scene, the passion play's ending,
Shine the faces of the immortal beloved-
     So close they were always a heart-beat away,
     At the end of longing, the great embrace,
Where love knows no distance.