even as Henry relented

One of my favourite actors of all time, if not my absolute favourite, is Peter O'Toole. From "Lawrence of Arabia" to "The Stunt Man" to "The Lion in Winter" he has always managed to impress me with his presence.

I had a Henry Planagenet moment a bit ago, I called it that because it reminded me of the scene in "The Lion in Winter" where he disowns his sons for all their conniving and plotting (O'Toole played it so brilliantly in the movie).

I was reading my poem "Latticework":

a soft and blushing surrender,
given in kind and loving thought.
sweet as the smell of a rose's first bloom
taken to the heighths of the latticework
of your heart. warm and exotic, crying out
for a kiss and a brave hand to accept
her lost control and hold her
safely to him as she gives over her love
in an opening of the fragrant petals
of her passionate charms.

...and it suddenly hit me how many times I have been so disappointed in love. Has there ever been a woman who lived up to what my friend, the poet Larry Jaffe, calls my "level of love"? I don't know. Certainly I have not always been the best apostle of the faith, and perhaps my desire to find someone who loves as a poet loves is hypocrisy of a hot degree.

Perhaps.

But I found myself seething with anger (not hatred, that is a bastard emotion) at all of those who spoke the words but never lived them, who wanted the immortality, the passion, even the money (when I still had it) but never the man. The poetry but not the poet.

You would not want to read what I wrote in that moment, in its own way as toxic as anything fo the missing cycle of the panther, the 8th. But it felt good to clean it out of me, to acknowledge my disappointment and my hurt and rage.

Then to forgive and move on, even as Henry relented. Of course, history tells us that, in the end, Henry was finally betrayed and torn down by those he forgave.