On the perspective of flowers…

To love, one must not just appreciate the flower, but also the field, the weather, and even those who pass by. Perhaps, in this sense, love is like an orchid – as unique to any individual as it is to the environment in which it thrives. What then is the perspective of an orchid? Do we, any of us, understand something as intangible as this?

When we are born, all of us share the same perspective – whether black, white, yellow, or some shade between. We leave a cocoon of warmth and nourishment, violently expelled into a cold and often unforgiving world. Our first sensation is pain – a thing we have likely been wholly unaware of until this moment. We are wet, and choking on amniotic fluid. Our sense of gravity is a new and likely terrifying sensation. We experience pain, and an indescribable loss as our umbilical cord is ripped from us. Hunger, rather than creeping, as it does with an adult, is instead a ravenous monster for which we have no defense or preparation. In these first moments the worst thing that has ever happened to any of us is simply being born. Everything after is perspective.

From there we grow – both in awareness and ability. Our emotional hurts are things we learn with experience – yet our first bloodied cut we remember. The first bruised knee, a monumental experience. We learn to lie – at first not of malice or intent, but because of perhaps that primitive tie all small children share that dictates if a thing cannot be seen, then it is no longer there – or it did not happen. How long before we learn it is safe to walk across a glass floor? When do we realize that those who love us most are invariably those who cause the most hurt? What changes do we experience that shape and mould our perspective different from another? Dare tell me to think outside of the box, and I shall step off from it that you may come out and bathe in the light of new perspective – all the while looking for unknown walls to push and escape from. Perspective is nothing more than another womb. To escape it we must of necessity experience another birth – and with it a pain and suffering made all the more intense for our understanding and awareness born of experience. Our acceptance or judgment, if based on perspective, is then no different than that of an infant in the womb. For each of us, regardless of this perspective, lies yet in another womb, awaiting only those conditions necessary for our birth into new awareness.

This brings me to the flower. Our orchid. A metaphor for love. A gem in a crown, a princess in a castle, or piece of wood adrift at sea and filled with lost memories of a green world. Ask me to love you, and you have asked me to understand you. Invite me to walk with you, and I share your perspective with my own. What environment is it you have known, that I would now share? Are you bright, and filled with vibrant color, living in the full glory of sun and element, or like rain – pastel and tucked away in the shadows of greater things – unseen – observing a world untamed and untasted?

So I speak of you, as no doubt you speak of me – but we know not one another. Only, I have been entranced by your scent – by the sight or you, or perhaps only at the rumor or whisper of what enchantment I might find should I chance upon so rare a flower. Do I know this? Have I seen or tasted it? No, but romance is a state of mind, where our perspective is for a time lost in the warm and sometimes fierce sea of another’s passion. Romance is the storm for which we have no protection, yet an embrace to which we willingly submit. Love, on the other hand, is something else entirely.

Love is what an orchid clings to. It is the tree that sustains, but more than that it is the balance allowing grow and expansion. It is the world in which the tree thrives – and all that nourishes it. The world above – flourish or fail, winter or summer it remains a constant, however malleable. Can you sustain another,
Unknown "Henry" Wild - 16 years, 10 months, 2 days ago

To love a poet

I think often and long of you. I wonder at the time we have not spent - and the chance of what time we may spend. My mind, as my heart, asks do I know myself so well that I will not be another in your company - and you in mine?

The world I would stop for love - though in the end save a lost soul at the cost of my own. It is not this, love, that scares or frightens me – but the loss that comes after. When comfort has replaced passion and intimacy has become familiarity, as if none could exist together.

Romance is then the spice of love, of life. For without romance, what is there to love? Where is the dance that entrances and intrigues? The pull, so much more than simple lust or pleasure, as a stranger, beckoning no more than a kiss, an enchantment. Romance. I dance it. I live it. I eat, sleep, and breathe it. My senses awash, intoxicated, and I, lost in arms of my own imagining. Kissed each night by lips that evaporate with the dream, my heart remembers, reminded by a mind that reels with the loss of waking alone each day.

At times it seems I live in a marble palace. However much I may sing and dance, whatever charms I might possess, are lost to cold statues, who, rather than having lost the ability to appreciate, have never known, and so cannot comprehend. Yes, I am a romantic. The world must be a better place than I have seen, and if it is not, then I shall make those places I occupy better - and teach others as I have known, that some dreams may be real - if only in the most remote corners of the world. It is here that, if indeed there be true magic, I shall discover it. In doing so I will turn stone to flesh and set it afire with passion. With my lips I will write music upon a soul unaware, discover what song lies unsung between us. This space between our bodies, unoccupied, yet filled with the music of creation. Like waves upon the face of a cliff, I hear this cry – and yearn to jump, to connect, to bridge this eternal gap of moments unknown. Arms outstretched I stand, drawn as by that ethereal music known to the Aos Si (Sidhe), and fall into imagination.

Love, I find, should be this. Echoing something everywhere, but occupying the space of nothing. This is love. This is romance. These empty spaces, like the music of moonbeams. How many sunsets are the same? How many times does the wind bring to you the same story? That is what I seek, be it a moment in time, or love eternal.

So yes, I come to dance and to sing with you. I come to see your sky, to taste your sunset and feel the grass of your country between my toes. Here I will lie beneath the stars, wondering at the wishes of others and dreams I lost with childhood’s passing. My hope is that you will sit with me. Next to me. I ask nothing other than what time and company you have spare - and in return I will share my soul with you, and perhaps together a ballad make.

Unknown "Henry" Wild - 16 years, 10 months, 2 days ago

Of my love I know not (a fictional ramble)

Moments pass too slowly. Days grow longer, it seems, to the point that they never end. One waking moment slides to the next. My awareness of time and space slips. In this emptiness I reach for things I once thought mine, only to find them gone. Like wishes granted, though not in the manner asked, and so unrecognized until, as love untended, they wither and die. What was now stands in stark contrast to the reality of what is. Could I have done better whispers, “Could you have done worse?”

Realization, like acceptance, settles around me. Morning chill seeps in, finding those dark corners of my spirit where prejudice, fear, and arrogance reside. I find no comfort in this mantle of inadequacy – and in fact some pain with the awakening. Where once I thought to conquer a world unknown, imposing my will on canvas both malleable and incapable of voicing protest, I have instead found a world aware. This knowledge somehow shapes me, guides me, and in my dark moments even blankets me. I think one lifetime cannot possibly be enough to understand it all. Perhaps, though, it is enough just to grasp the edges – to feather an intimacy, however elusive, of how much more there is than I have yet seen. In doing so, I step forth, one foot into an ocean calm. Surely this storm is my own? Do I stand away, hiding? Do I close my eyes, and embrace this end with open arms? Is not every end a new beginning? Every death a new life and this no more than a doorway through which all doorways shall cease?

Intrigued by what I know to be a storm of my own making, and beyond reckoning, I find one question dares ask an answer. Love – it whispers, and what of it? What of the people I have seen, the loves blossomed, grown, and then, despite the most attentive care, faded and washed to nothing? How is it that one can expect to know their love – in hand or undiscovered – and not themselves? Like a ship too long at sea, each speaks of land, having never seen it, though certain it shall bear trees and fruit. What if instead it were desert or tundra? Is there not love to be found in that as well? Mayhap I should intentionally never find the land others so often seek –instead filling my love into the sea. What then?

Indeed, what is a poet with no poetry? A bird with no song, no more than a butterfly – but the song is in the eyes. Close your voice then. Close your eyes. Stand close. Smell me, washed or with sweat from love – but free from artificial scent. Know the animal that I am, that you might see what more there is in things wild than things imagined. Carry your heart to me – not that I might take it in my hands, but that I might know you complete – and you complete in your understanding of self. Step away from the world unknown and into the world unseen. Find me as I find you – and at least know what it is we are not. Together celebrate those things we share – difference and similarity. Bring to me your hurts, as I show my own, and together find a perspective to understand and absolve.

Tell me of your past loves, as I shall share mine. Give to me what it was unique or passing that drew you to another. Listen as I shall to the song we have danced with others, giving us each a carriage shaped by experience without the one we now share. Give definition to that shape, in acknowledgment and shared appreciation – for both the good and bad. Bring to me, as I bring to you, a love I know not.

Unknown "Henry" Wild - 16 years, 11 months, 5 days ago

For those who feel hopeless or sad because of another's insensitivity, or simply change of direction in life, love, or friendship...

Remember that our hearts are like canvas, and life's experiences, good or bad, paint a multitude of colors on us all. When next someone meets you, and loves you - it will not be for who you were before this hurt, but for who you are after.

We are, each and every one of us, a mountain, a stream, an open sky... Nothing and no one can change that. What makes it special is not the places where everyone has been, or the paths, waterfalls, or beautiful vies that everyone knows and sees - but the places you have only shared with someone willing to discover them - someone willing to take that risk, and journey - not knowing, and sometimes not even caring that they might or might not find something. Only understanding that to know you, and to love you, they must be comfortable with you. And finally - someone who recognizes that you are not a book, a math problem, or a puzzle to be sorted out and then completely understood - but rather a mystery - an individual.

We all keep our secrets. It is what makes us unique. Pain is like fire at times - but fire can temper, fire can color, adding strength and beauty, or it can also destroy. Take care that your heart does not take too much harm or hurt - but instead remains beautiful, gaining color from what has happened to you, that it does not happen to another.
Unknown "Henry" Wild - 16 years, 11 months, 27 days ago

My tale is that I am a lost puppy these days, working often - but still looking for those things in life that move me. In Afghanistan it is snow covered mountains, blue lakes, open sky, and some of the great people and children I have had the pleasure of meeting here. The things I am after I have no doubt that I will find - I just wonder that maybe I am not looking in the right places.
Unknown "Henry" Wild - 17 years, 6 days ago