Meet me in the quiet place
among the flowers,
among the compost,
among the birth and death,
among all the imperfections of love.
Meet me in the fearless field
among the blossoms,
among the falling petals,
among the upright and broken stems,
where dreams and reality are free.
Post Script
The quiet place in this poem is not a refuge from imperfection. It is a place where nothing belonging to love must be hidden: not the flowers, not the compost, not birth or death, and not the ways we remain incomplete.
Compost is not separate from the flower. It is what fallen blossoms and broken stems become, and what nourishes whatever rises next. Love contains this same generative movement. Its disappointments, losses, and mistakes need not be discarded; patiently received, they may become part of what allows love to deepen.
The second stanza opens the quiet place into a fearless field. Blossoms and falling petals are not opposing conditions, nor are upright and broken stems. Each belongs to the same living field. Fearlessness does not mean remaining untouched. It means allowing the whole cycle to appear without asking love to preserve only its beautiful moments.
Here, dreams and reality are free because neither must defeat the other. Dreams may reveal what the heart longs for, while reality reveals what is actually here. Intimacy begins when both can be welcomed into the same field.
Image credit: Dianthus caryophyllus ‘Brocade’ (2008), David J. Stang.
Primitive Joe 
