Love and Hate: A Poem

||| FROM NANCY REAS, daughter of Bill Urschel |||

Love and Hate

by Bill Urschel

To love at all
is to love the universe.
Each act of love
as it expands
in quantity and quality
expands the universe,
expands the oneness
and sense of belonging
to a cosmic whole.

Not to the cosmos
as some fearsome
and unlovable entity,
but to each person
now, past, and future.
To every living creature
every tree and blade of grass
every atom of the earth and other earths
still silent to us,
but not to the universe.

To hate at all
is to hate the universe,
to break the continuity
of the expanded cosmos.

Not just an unknowing
theoretical abstract,
but each person
suffers from the hate.

Hate spreads
and feeds on itself.
It is a universal destroyer and
love cannot exist
where hate abounds.
Hate stems from fear.
Love can supplant hate
if the will exists
and fears are forgotten.

Bill Urschel