Ready for Love
Is it human nature
to lean toward the cliff’s bright edge
just before the hero arrives—
to stand where stone gives way to sky,
where the hawk circles its patient question,
where the wind lifts the hair from our faces
and whispers, not yet?
To mistake the storm cloud for an ending,
the falling leaf for a farewell,
when perhaps the world is only turning its weather,
asking us to wait for the rain to pass?
Every cliffhanger is a trail marker,
a small wooden arrow weathered by seasons,
half-hidden among the pines,
pointing through the green hush of the forest,
suggesting there may be a way through
if we give the path time to appear.
Sometimes the trail disappears beneath snow.
Sometimes the river rises
and makes us question the crossing.
Sometimes roots reach across the earth
like old hands reminding us
that even trees must learn
where to place their weight.
Yes, it is darkest before dawn,
but dawn is already loosening
its gold ribbon behind the hills.
The eastern sky is paling
like a flower beginning to open.
Good decisions ask for clear eyes,
a little logic, a little math,
and the humility to read the weather—
to know when the clouds are gathering
and when they are only passing.
A winter hike needs warm layers,
steady boots, and cleats that bite the ice;
the mountain welcomes wonder,
but asks us to come prepared.
The pines do not hurry toward spring.
The river does not apologize for changing course.
The glacier moves almost invisibly,
and still it shapes the valley.
Even a green fairway has its lessons:
practice, patience, the hush before a swing,
the small white ball lifted briefly into sunlight
before gravity calls it home.
The meadow does not demand perfection
from every blade of grass.
It simply keeps growing.
Willy-nilly will not carry us home—
yet joy is no less necessary.
Let laughter lift like birds from the grass;
let wonder move through us like warm rain.
Let presence be our compass,
hope our north star,
and love the fire we carry
when the trail grows cold.
One careful step, then another:
this is how the trail becomes a life.
This is how roots find their way through stone,
how rivers carve their names into canyons,
how seeds split themselves open
in the dark because something in them
trusts the light.
Outside, the earth opens its green book:
fresh-cut grass is a bright new page,
sunlight lays a warm hand on the face,
and soil beneath our palms reminds us
we belong to something patient and alive.
The garden teaches its quiet mathematics:
what is buried is not necessarily lost.
A bulb sleeps underground
while winter passes overhead.
Rain gathers in the hollow places.
Roots drink what the surface cannot see.
This is not cliché; it is elemental—
the honest arithmetic of breath and sky,
the science of roots reaching for rain,
the tide returning to the shore,
the moon pulling silver from the water,
the heart remembering it was made to grow.
So I will not leap from the story too soon.
I will not confuse the precipice with destiny
or mistake one dark season for the whole climate.
I will walk on—toward the clearing,
past the last stand of trees,
where the path widens beneath my feet,
where the meadow opens like a held breath,
where birds rise from the tall grass
and sunlight spills over everything.
There, beyond the bend,
the whole wide world is waiting—
green, sunlit, breathing,
open as sky after rain,
ready for love.
