Poems by Rose

Heirloom Heart

 

I hung where morning learned to fashion dew,

And afternoons grew amber on the vine;

The patient Sun, with every hour it drew,

Persuaded flesh to sweeten into time.

 

The crows came. Summer beetles burrowed deep.

The thorny stems reached out with ageless art.

They traced their restless signatures to keep

Their crimson script upon my yielding Heart.

 

For Love is not the bloom that wakes in Spring,

Then sheds its crimson at the season’s close.

It is the quiet ripening of a thing

Whose deepest beauty only patience knows.

 

I did not hurry daylight from the sky,

Nor beg the rain to fall before its hour.

The vine was never measured by its why,

But by its unseen, faithful, upward power.

 

And so, if I should place this Heart in yours,

Receive it as the Garden first received:

Not for the flawless skin that it endures,

But for the life beneath it that believed.

 

Should this Heart one day be mine to give,

Take not the fruit alone into your hand;

Receive the seasons teaching it to live,

And all the patient love that shaped the land.

 

The world has pecked where tenderness was found,

Has left its little evidence behind;

Yet every scar became a sweeter ground

Where Love rooted deeper through the rind.

 

So hold Her gently.

 

Not because She breaks—

 

But because every living heart is grown,

And what is cherished slowly always takes

Far longer to become than to be known.