The Abysmal (Water) in Love

You're in the gorge together — a hard passage that isn't one crisis but a series. Be water: flow through each difficulty completely rather than resisting it, stay genuinely yourselves with each other (danger strips pretence anyway — let it), and strive only for small gains (line 2): the kind word today, one honest conversation, this week survived well. Grand solutions and sweeping renegotiations exceed what a mind under pressure can carry — they belong to dry land. And keep the earthen-vessel simplicity of line 4: in extremity, drop all ceremony with each other; plain truth plainly given is the ration that gets couples through gorges.

The dark water may be grief, depression, or a run of bruising experiences that make the heart brace at the thought of trying again. Water's counsel: don't set up house in the abyss (line 1 — danger grown familiar becomes the pit), and don't lunge for rescue either — the relationship grabbed at as a life-raft becomes its own gorge. Fill this low place completely: feel what's real, learn what it teaches, and pass on when it's full. Keep walking in lasting virtue (the image): steady character through the dark stretch is exactly what you'll be glad of on the far side.