Feet Firmly Planted on Earth
21 December 2025
https://poems.culturing.net/2025/12/feet-firmly-planted-on-earth/
Was the urge of the unconscious perhaps only apparently reaching out towards the person, but in a deeper sense towards a god?
Something feels off, and I cannot quite name it.
One hopes for a final resolution, but one never comes.
Must we drift in uncertainty forever? I do not blame you,
but I must be true to my doubts, because otherwise
we may both find ourselves lost, and not in ecstasy...
I don't know you that well, not as well as I'd like,
and a love that begins before knowledge cannot long endure,
not for me, because what am I loving? A phantom, a figment,
a dream? There's a way to firmer ground, but I fear
we have missed it, and gone around to the love chamber
far too soon. And it can't be undone. Can we go back
and find each other as we really are? It is not
that far, but it carries a risk: we may not like what we find.
Still this outcome is better than a false love, which would be
a prison for both of us. I do want you, and I do want love
to come true, but some labor remains to ensure that we are not just lost
in that ether of blue, but have four feet firmly planted on earth.
--
But are dreams not their own door to reality?
If so, then the answer is clear: we are meant to be.
There are too many signs to ignore or write off as coincidence.
Something is happening, something real,
though the mind must play catchup and flail to understand...
can it be that understanding is not needed here,
that the pull of some unseen gravity works its power
in a way much stronger than any mind? If so,
it is not my power, or yours, that binds us, but something
higher, much higher, and deeper than words can explain.
If we know this feeling, the pull of its power,
then I think we should trust it, because in the final analysis
this is the earth into which we are planted, and which grows in us,
as in all men and women, when the time is right.
--
And the time is right, that is hard to ignore or deny,
but I look one last time to a desolate sky
as if it knew the answer, as if it brings any gift
but rain, to nourish the seeds. Now you and I are caught
in the dance of the cycle of regeneration, with Demeter's blessing,
and time will tell if it makes us happy, but Lord knows
we must play our parts.
