Love is sockless and never wears shoes. The mountain is too hard to climb otherwise. The toes must grip the steep face of rock and hold on tightly to the sharp ledges.

 

 

Love never sees the summit. Its feet yield to the mountain’s hard wisdom: finding rest in sudden seams of green, where the heart grows fat, and climbing past pain to reach a fractured rock to  bind its wounds..

 

 

The first bleeding is the worst, always such a surprise to the new climber.

 

 

The calloused feet never forget the grass, the cool sweet beginnings of the long climb; and when the fall comes, as it must come at the end of every life, the memory of grass makes it all worthwhile.