My heart was open. I think it always was, which makes it so susceptible to feeling too much the lack of love, the layers of loss. My heart was open when you came along.
Lucky, I was. But I know you were led. The same light as mine has found me again.
Overcasting the heart, the plagued cloud drew color and life; eruption ensued, torn from the burst deep inside. The salt rained on the open wounds. The gray swooped in, attempted final ruin.
But a survivor returned from his own near entombment, kissed petal lips to restore the hues,
and love rushed in again to ignite the blooms, imbued with goodness the only truth.
The excess overflowed, flooded the world, infused each connecting branch, bled the colors to combat all hopelessness.
The gray cloud retreated. Only depression was depleted.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. (1 John 4:7-8)
Another fallen blossom… like the ones before in years passed I photographed and told stories for.
Each of these moves me in such profound ways; what’s underfoot, what others pass, stops me in my tracks with the silent beauty so profoundly displayed.
For a lifetime, I feel I could sit and contemplate, reflect on all the lessons and secrets it portrays…
This is how I know I’m different, for off the beaten path, tucked away, alone in nature is my happiest place.
The soft morning light haloing the fallen lady bids me pay respect and paint legacy allegories.
Not as sad as the last one I payed homage to, (but of course that is influenced by my inner untappable currents and current surface mood, no doubt, in turn, affected by the recent tides and moon…) this fallen beauty, still so poised, fills me with bittersweet truths,
for we, the best things, this life itself… all fleeting, all blossoms plucked by breezes in the grand scheme of it all, these hundred years if we are lucky (but who’s to say that’s luck when we know not what’s next and beyond; perhaps those taken early were needed for something else, angels only visiting to help us with ourselves…) nothing at all, a blink in time, though insignificant nor the center of the universe should we feel; we are each dearly loved, part of the same mother tree unseen but a morph of every variety, the keeper of every seed and leaf releasing us one by one into the world upon the breezes in perfectly timed seasons to root ourselves until it’s our time and we are called back again like this beautiful blossom having just detached. I always wonder if it’s a leap of faith or sacrifice or circumstance.
In any event, who could not ponder the rest of their life happening upon
Cocooned in the soft morning light of my love, draped in the barely-pink lip brushes of my touch, comfortably cradled in complete and mutual trust, stay awhile longer in the bliss of us…
I am NOT a gardener. Though a gardener I’ve never tried to be… Every natural wonder I’ve ever encountered has been there before me, remnants from previous tenants’ tastes and sculptures wild and free lovingly planted in my path by the Creator Almighty and meant at the time of discovery to be the personal messages needed.
And so it is with my hibiscus pinks, cut down to the ground by the men so they could build a fence more easily. Flowers dear to me for the way they so faithfully after such meaningful moments took turns blooming to mark the milestones in my healing, to commemorate the special blessings, to symbolize with such humble beauty the changing seasons within me.
In the soft, golden morning rising sun, they lift themselves again to greet me. Not defiantly. Just filled with inspiration. An example. A reunion. A smiling. I approach and spend some moments I do not have according to clock and duty. The buds seem from an extra-long green hibernation to be defrosting, thawing. I know what lies inside. The knowing denies mystery but does not anticipation-impede.
My heart does indeed too beat again, my dear friends. They can never cut short our aspiring stories.
Laura Denise 