To Joel

May true thoughts, like dawn’s rosy fingers,
catch the tears your heart cannot hold back;
and with them, water those furrows, long-planted,
whose blooms accompany us through Life.

Pain, my dear friend, is the sun’s blazing love:
endurance alone can prove its healthy gift.
And yet, as the clouds gather and cover us,
so pleasure and hope reprieve of constant grief.

Stronger, hardier, we ache toward a sky unreachable,
grasping at nothing our fingers can touch.
Yet I feel it within me: the blossom coming forth,
invisible to all, but known to the Gardener’s Plan.

One day – ah, what day? – these thorns so obstructing,
will shrink invisible next to a glorious Truth:
Oh Color! I cannot command you, or bid you hence,
you are the fruit of my Beloved’s kiss;

And yet, if I obey and heed your grand Design,
one day, some eye will feel your touch through me.