I sat beside the pond, looking at the line of trees outlined by a pure blue sky. The glossy green blackjack oak leaves were turning a mixture of caramel and ruddy red. In front of the trees was a stand of little bluestem, a native grass with subtle beauty. Each starts with a little clump of narrow, curled leaves at ground level, sending several tall stems to reach chest high. The tiny seeds along those stems are feathery, and in autumn sunlight they are like a constellation of stars scattered among the grasses. Altogether a lovely little spot on a fine late autumn day.

You might say that this preserve has been kissed by creation, filled with a beauty that it wears in one form or another throughout the seasons. Before long I was thinking of “Wear Your Love Like Heaven,” a song by Donovan Leitch that most of us – of a certain age – have some memory of. 

When it was released in 1967 I heard the song many times, but never listened to it well. I assumed it was a hippie love song (“kiss me once more”), the opening of the double album “A Gift From a Flower to a Garden.” But Donovan, with his soft Scottish voice, is often deeper than that. It is more like a prayer than a love song.

The verses suggest an artist with a beautiful palette of colors, or someone experiencing such a range of hues in nature. “Color in sky Prussian blue,” but the colors change with sunset as the “crimson ball sinks from view.” There are shifts to “rose carmethene” and “alizarin crimson.” It is easy to imagine being in a place where the land and sky overwhelm one with beauty, where any of us might ask for more such experiences of awe. Such a plea could easily be a prayer:

“Lord, kiss me once more
Fill me with song
Allah, kiss me once more
That I may, that I may
Wear my love like heaven”

What might it mean to wear your love like heaven? I suppose wearing it would be to let it show, not hide it, and offer it freely to anyone. And a state of bliss and love freely shared with everyone is one way to imagine heaven. 

Within such a state, Donovan experiences an extraordinary vision: 

“Cannot believe what I see
All I have wished for will be
All our race proud and free”

Perhaps he is seeing what follows from wearing our love like heaven. Generous and open-hearted, not trapped in greed or the desire for domination, free of self-destructive impulses and all the things that bind and restrict us. Wearing a transcendental love would make us proud and free. 

It was a beautiful vision to carry with me as I walked through oak woodlands and on trails along patches of prairie that are lovingly being restored. Some of the blackjack oak leaves have taken on a shade of alizarin crimson, and tonight, if the sky is clear enough, we might look up to see Prussian blue. 

To connect with and be blessed by the divine, filled with song, and to live in beauty and love. That’s a lot of message to be carried by a two-and-a-half minute pop song from 1967, but we are allowed our interpretations of the meaning of art and this is how I hear it. The song has been covered over the years by people I think of as serious artists. Ritchie Havens recorded it in 1969 and Sarah McLachlan covered it in her 1991 album, “Solace.”