The Golden Harvest (Midsummer)
The day is hot,
The sun a brilliant orb
Bobbing orange-yellow
In a clear blue sky.
Its rays reach down
To the fertile earth,
Where it has nourished
The earth and all her living things
(And will continue to do so,
Reassuringly)
And where the people are now
Reaping in the golden harvest
Of the seeds they have sown
In the past year.
This harvest is
Not simply a harvest of
Corn and vines,
Vegetable gardens and wild berry patches.
To the contrary,
This harvest, this golden harvest,
Is also the harvest of their personal crops,
The fruition of the things in their own lives.
The seeds are their ideas, their beginning plans;
The earth for the seeds is the fertility
Of the boundless universe, ever-giving without questioning
(As some people also strive to do);
The rain that helps the golden harvest flourish
Is the sweat of the peoples' own hard work,
As well as their very tears when they think
Their harvest is in danger
(For sometimes it is then that they work the hardest);
And the sun is the bright, untarnishable part of their own soul,
Ever-nourishing everything they see or touch or feel.
It is Midsummer,
And it is time to reap the harvest,
The golden harvest,
Of the hard work of another year.
Ashley Ravenwood, copyright summer 1995
