A Fork Not in the Road

I stood inside a dream that felt more like revelation.
My mind was alert, yet everything around me
seemed charged with a deeper meaning.

I sensed I was standing at a turning point:
to bring something new into existence,
or preserve the familiar shape of what had already been.

A waning moon watched over me, dim and hollowed,
its thinning light like a reminder that all radiance must surrender so something else might arrive.

The wheat field breathed around me,
a slow ocean of gold;
the sustenance of life,
the emblem of everything that sustains us.

To my left, a path flattened into certainty,
a corridor worn down by countless souls
who chose the promise of safety
over the risk of becoming more than they had been.

I could not see its end,
but I knew its meaning.
It was the road of the common middle:
life lived as already known,
the quiet acceptance of “enough.”

In my hand, a lantern.
Not a promise, but a possibility.

To the right, no path at all;
the wheat stood high and unbent,
unwelcoming, but full of possibility.
The pull toward it was unmistakable.

I had grown into someone who no longer turned back
when confronted by the unfamiliar.
So I parted the stalks
and stepped into what had never been walked.

Each step was a surrender,
each step a test,
each step an initiation into the vow
to meet what lies beyond the edges of comfort.

I raised my gaze to the stars —
not for direction, but as truth:
that humanity has always been drawn
to what it cannot comprehend,
and that longing is the signature of our becoming.

I continued forward, afraid yet certain.
The path was forming beneath me,
not inherited, but made.
I thought it was mine alone.

Yet before the end revealed itself,
I woke.
And something followed me back:
a knowing that the message
was never meant only for my own becoming.

I understood I was shaping a path
that did not pre-exist.
A passage of first footsteps.
a rising beyond the small hunger of personal growth
into the wider purpose of widening the world.

Those who step into the unmarked
become the first line in a map
that others may one day follow.
But others clear enough space
that the many can walk farther.

I sensed I was meant to be one of those
who clears passage.
Who shapes a route that did not exist,
not for glory;
but so others may find their own frontier.

It was a quiet transcendence:
growth turning outward,
beyond the narrow borders of self,
toward a widening world.