by Em Metz
Love has always been my foremost inspiration in the beautiful journey of my life, deepening my understanding of what I truly am with every passing season. As I near the end my life’s spring, the uplifting sunlight of my summer has already begun shining into this gentle transition. The sun has illuminated a multitude of new ways for me to love. These bright stepping stones lead away from the familiar footpath of science to the widening horizon of art. The warm, sweet smell of dried grass after the rain perfumes the wind blowing from this new horizon. It smells like love, the transcendent goodness that remains in the heart of one who has given all and has nothing left in the physical realms to distract from love.
As I float along this heady path towards the sun, the surrounding pools of reflection show what I could grow into if I could flow more smoothly with the ripples of life. I pause to learn from them, longer than most. Others run past me on the path, but I feel no need to keep pace. My love guides me to linger in this beautiful union of the seasons. I have been judged by the runners as a loner, a person without ambition, a dead end. All they see is yellowed, overgrown grass in my future. Is green more valuable than gold? They do not see the autumnal wreaths and crowns that resurrect in wild loveliness from spring and summer’s remnants as I do.I see the runners in the distance, having reached their destinations, and yet they continue to look back at me. Was the run worth it if you regret it?
Every soft step along the mossy pond edges is the last I will take there so I cherish the gradual journey. I treasure nature’s cradling support as I grow patiently like the oaks and sycamores that weave their branched magic above me, sheltering my dreamer’s mind. If these wise sentinels choose to peacefully grow for many years into their love’s magnificence, why shouldn’t I follow their lead? Because I am different from them? A tree is not like a human, and a human is not like a tree? We are all love, basking in the sun and seeking insight in our watery, ephemeral reflections. I feel our deeply resonating oneness.
I rest among our shared roots, that golden hope still wafting from the future, the scent ever stronger. Have I lost anything of true worth in my relaxed wanderings if my hope has only grown greater? Everything that I feel tells me that trusting love—being love—has been worth every sacrifice. The earth grows richer as the faded grass returns to the soil from which it came. The meadow-built crown does not stay on the head forever.
I arise from my reverie and flow on in the stream of love that bubbles towards the vastness of future possibilities. The sun guides the scattering clouds across the expanse of golden grassland whose edge I have reached, the stream twining its love through this infinite landscape. The fragrant grass beckons in its humble way, and my feet transform from roots to wings. The runners have crushed it enough. This gilded expanse of earth is home now, and I will nurture it as the forest has nurtured me.
My spring ventures in love reach fruition in the sage maturity of summer fields.The wheat is my wealth, my comfort, my sustenance. What the runners have mistaken for dying land in comparing it to future places, I embrace as my citadel. The dried grass is only as dead as one’s imagination. In mine, the gold of the sun and the gold of the wheat connect, creating a stairway to heaven that is yet to be overplayed. The openness of the fields invites the dreamer to fill it with light-hearted creation. Art emerges from every shaft of sunlight and wheat. My sheltering forest nest has designed me for imagination’s flight, and fly I finally do.I learn to weave with the sun’s patterns, and I rest in the hammock of the moon. There is such joy and exhilaration in the moon’s wild gleaming across the windswept plains.The coolness of the night juxtaposes perfectly with this glowing lunar love.The day and night flow together with the moon as light’s eternal gateway.This celestial perfection is the dreamer’s paradise, my paradise of love.
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