A Calling for the Middleman

A Poem by Drake Hyman

Can you honestly say that you really do not love each person that you see in this world, yet you love things lacking a soul?

So soon child?

Already you have fallen in love?

Yet just recently your mind’s affirmation of failure and rejection dominated your thoughts,
and now it is as if your inhibiting doubts and somber lamentations broke free of your self-chained chasm of a mind.

What changed it, child?
You have always walked with the uncertain, who gaze assuredly at those they pass, offering a smile,
yet return home at night to a bitter routine of pessimism and indecision.

Melancholy they had called you repeatedly.
Had you escaped that label at last,
only to be sucked back in secretly?

Who ever told you that your mind wandered beneath the surface?
Had you never been told that, would it have even descended initially?

Regardless, you have been told, and have been trying to reach the surface,
to gasp for breath,
to escape,
ever since.

Stop assuming that you swam so deep, child,
for you did not.
No other man before you even knows what dwells at the bottom of the seas,
just as no man knows life’s deepest secrets.

But pay heed!
Were you not able to take my words to heart and see that I am present where you cannot go?
Did you notice the echo, or was your soul too immersed in this newly found “love”?

Oh, it is indeed love, child.
It is love undoubtedly.
Yet who are you to say you know anything about love,
when it is I who gave it to you?

You cried for love, and I handed it over willingly,
for unlike you, I did not have to weigh the consequences.
I gave you love in more ways than you ever asked for,
or, frankly, ever deserved.

You had fallen,
and yes, you “hit the bottom”,
but did you escape?

Were you able to pull yourself out?

Of course not.

You were rescued, my child,
in spite of your egotism.