Harvesting Value

Samantha Wallen
Jul 23, 2017 · 2 min read

I know that the number one thing I am harvesting is my own value.

It is the luscious, ripe, full dark skinned bulge of the plum. The taste on my tongue. The juice that runs down my face in overflowing ripe exuberance. It is the sweet stickiness on my fingers. The stain on my napkin.

It’s the bow of the branch as it strains to hold and contain the full arrival of what the seed is capable of. It’s the loss of the flower that gave up its nectar to the hummingbirds and the bees, to the next plum tree that will come to be.

It is the soft squish of the ground, the sound of overwhelm hanging in fullness. The weight of a blossom transformed into the heavy fruit filled body that dances with gravity. How it meets the ground with a breaking of its skin because it can no longer hold in all the life that wants to burst forth from the flesh of its limitations.

And it is none of these things.

It is the quiet after all the plums have gone.

It is the gentle call of the earth that pulls the flow of life back into itself, back into the inner core, the hidden desire, the private interior of subtle darkness as the branches lose their leaves and the ground freezes over. It is the first frost. It is the acceptance of the coming snow, the darker days, the receding light.

I think of the plum tree

in the front yard of the house that was my own

the house that was meant to be because it was so right

the house of arrival

deep in the room of my own text

the place I entered my body

and thus my life for the first time

I think of it there still

growing in that yard next to the towering Catalpa

how it is likely forming plums

imbued with the air, the rain, the elements of this particular

year that will shape each fruit into a unique taste of season

This vision of value

is simply a dormant longing

a natural vision that lives in the original seed

from which this tree rises and forms its life

Its an inner knowing that finds

its way in then out and through

a miraculous containment

so that it can be

the sweet plum

it is meant to be


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100 Naked Words

Est. May 2016. 100 vulnerable words, one day at a time. Every day.

Samantha Wallen

Written by

Founder/CEO WriteInPower, poet, writer, book coach, social justice disciple, steam-punk time traveler tending to where value, core wounds, and brilliance meet.

100 Naked Words

Est. May 2016. 100 vulnerable words, one day at a time. Every day.

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