Embrace

I'm bleeding from the inside out
Tears red as crimson
Scarring my heart like jagged acid streaks
Lightning bolts and broken arrows
Trickling like fallen stars
The shatter of this crystal heart
Broken into a thousand pieces
That snag, pull, and tear at my soul

Is it divine indifference
Or perhaps permissiveness
Or selfish drowning in my own sorrow?
Where are you yesterday?
As uncertain as you were then, I would embrace you now
To this lost today

But as I look up into the first clear night of spring
The stars wink like Your shared tears
Etched in diamonds that catch in the corner of Your eyes
The heavens enfold me like Your mighty arms
And there I can cry
And I know You will hear
I cry out like David of old, knowing my Father will hear me
Will deliver me, and heal the damage
Turn the pain into joy in the morning

Take me to a place of muted colors
And only Your voice
Only your healing flooding my mind
Cleansing my blood from the disease of pain
A sickness of the heart that plagues me daily

Much will change in my life
But You, Oh Lord, will remain the same
Give me the courage to hold tightly to my Rock of refuge
Help me to get lost only in Your eyes
Never lost to Your omnipresent heart

Embrace like a kiss of forgiveness
Understanding a gentle touch to the cheek
No one will ever know me like You
Almighty, invincible, omnipotent God
Holy flame with a Father's heart

Mad, Mad Life

There is a madness to it
That your life here ended
Just as spring and new life began.
But there is an even greater joy to be found
In knowing your pain ended
And an even more vivid, free life began for you...

I think it pleased you
To smell those first warm, spring breezes of that year
And to use them as the pillow for your head
As you lay down the last time
Blown straight into heaven's arms
With your beloved robins singing in welcome
To spring here
And to new life for you in the clouds

Green was your favorite color
The green of all things I believe
The olive green of a winter sky at dawn
Bearing the blush of a new day
The spring green of the first shoots of grass
Promising more, and company, to come
The mint green of tiny shoots on the fingertips of trees
Heralding flowers for little princess crowns
And fairy-tale fantasies.
The deep green of the sea
Hinting at a love deeper than we can know
And the fuzzy green of the mist
As the sun glows in soft beams through a forest canopy.
A rooftop and balcony to the animals and their chattering dance
Their excitement on the advent of spring.
The piercing green of your daughter's eyes
As they trusted your arms instinctively
At the beginning of life...
Green as the stars in her eyes
Who would never know you to do wrong

Green is a color
But to you it was life
It *is* life as you patiently wait by gates of emerald and pearl
With the steadiness of many-winged companions
And His approving watchfulness a shield over you

Sometimes I feel the count of my years is too long
And the struggle not worth the fight
How easy it would be to succumb to the desire
To be with you again
Rather than continue to brave this tempestuous mountain path
Called life

Even on the highest mountain peak
Where the most joyous moments wait
There is a damp chill in the air at the deepest place
Where you can no longer join in the laughter
Or share in the tears
Where you cannot hold my child's hand and teach him to paint
Teach him what it means to love
Show him the hidden paths through life's difficult forests
Give him the name of every bird and flower and tree

No one compared with your artists heart
Or the mind of yours that grew to know your Father
Better in sickness and utter dependence
Than ANYONE I have known

As you grieved for the childhood and adulthood of mine that you'd miss
You thanked Him for the moments we'd had
The few dreams that you'd been able to share
The stories we'd been able to read
And games we'd been able to play.
I think you knew even then
That I would grow a rebellious heart
Jaded and angry, scarred from too many beatings.
But the pain you could not spare me
You lessened
If only by asking God the permission
To guide me to eventual consolation

You knew more in your last few years
Than most learn in life-times
One day soon I hope to hear what all of it meant
Hear again the stories from your knee
And watch your eyes alight with the unconstrained excitement
When you have unraveled some divine mystery

I am, even now, your faithful student
And greatest admirer.
As I learn more day-by-day who you were
And how much I am like you
...and sometimes, in several ways that matter...
Not like you nearly enough.

You would never have wanted to see
That your legacy might end here
Or know the little ways that I die daily remembering you
And the child that you left behind
Often reduced to a child once more.

Written: 03-30-2010
(Tues. afternoon)
This is dedicated to my father, Ron 'Ronnie' Rosenberry

A Painful Path

"Submit to the suffering and walk the road to Golgotha."

I pricked my finger on a thorn
And watched the blood drop pearl
Ruby as the rose petals beside.
I sighed to think that everything most truly, deeply beautiful
Most worth fighting for
Requires great pain
But it is worth it in the end.

We suffer through, yet find joy in the journey
Greater than any ill-disguised farce
Above all temporary promises
Fragile and breakable as tissue-paper flowers

Clinging to this set and narrow course
Though the sharp rocks cut my feet
Grass might be a softer option
But it too easily hides many things.

You were open about the hazards Lord
Of following in Your bloody footsteps.
You hurt for us and hurt with us
Knowing we will be stronger in the end
And comforted at journey's completion
With Your very presence...
We can only imagine and dream about that day.
And until then keep walking
And glimpse You as we may

Written: 03-30-2010 (Tues.)

In My Life Lord

In my life
I've seen you move mountains
That I did not even know were there
I've seen walls come tumbling down
That I didn't even know I'd erected
And watched you build something new, and stronger with the rubble remaining

I've seen you smile in a summer sky
Blink quietly to me to show your pride in the fireflies winking lights
In my life, you've loved me more
Than I have ever understood

In my life, you've given me the butterflies
To show me a hint of the beauty and freedom You can create in me
And also the tears that I cry, rain on my windowpane
To show me how pain cleanses my wounds
How time can instigate healing

You've allowed me to know love
To know family
And to understand again as I did as a child
And then had forgotten out of a willful, jaded heart
How allowing them to love and laugh with me
Can heal the emptiness left from those I've lost
How I need them, and even the pain of losing them sometimes
To truly feel alive
Even when the hurt is so strong it must make me weary as though dead

You've never forgotten me, or been too busy to hear me
Never gotten disgusted by my wearisome ways
Never turned me away when I called for You
Or dropped me when I feared that I would fall
You never let go when I asked You to hold me
And never let me run completely away
When I tried to escape a love I didn't deserve

Be with me now Lord
As You were then
When all we had was each other
When all I could do was cling to You
As the life-raft You really are
Help me to believe
That you will NEVER forget or abandon me
And that to You alone
I will never have to say,
'Goodbye.'

Written: 03-29-2010
(Monday Night)

You Carried Your Cross

I watched you carry your cross

And I saw it echoed, duplicated in your
eyes
Every time you looked at me

All that you wanted for me

You gave up yourself

All that you wanted to watch me learn and do

The moments of growing up that you wanted so much to be there for

You knew you would not have to treasure

I saw the pain when you thought I did not

When it was too great to hide

I watched physical weakness become spiritual strength

When I asked you to read to me

As you had done so many times with me before

You were too weak to speak

Too weak to hold me as you wanted to so desperately

And I saw the cross again in your eyes

As you grew weaker and weaker

Your faith grew stronger and stronger

Until you began to embrace your cross

As I have not yet learned how to do

NOTE: This is unedited, unfinished, and quite frankly probably pretty boring. I don't think anyone really comes here to read anyway, so it shouldn't matter. I just felt the need to post it somewhere. It's about my dad. Since I was the youngest of us 3 children, I was still not in school (4 yrs. old) through dad's sickness (he died of cancer). I knew him sick more than well.

The note on reading was just that, once, when he was very weak, I came out with a book and asked him, 'Daddy, will you read to me?' It had always been a favorite time of his - when he read to us. He didn't say anything, but I could see the pain in his eyes. He was too weak, at that point, to even speak. Daddy was a wonderful speaker. He was a pastor.

Child Of The Forest

Child Of The Forest

Shining dimly like the light
From some perverse moon
Beauty in illumination
But it is illuminated darkness
A shadow falling on a heart of stone
Whose only dream is to live in the light
While dreaming in black

Tainted innocence
Is innocence still?
Portraying clearly what it once was
And showing just as clearly how it left
And what is now left behind
Silhouette or reflection
Deeper beneath the surface of who you are
Yet a ghostly imprint, fingerprint
Of a life you remember only in dreams
A waking, yet slumbering nightmare

Child of the lonely dark
Foregoing hope of redemption
To cling more tightly still to the memories
Dancing like phantom fireflies
In the flickering film surrounding
Like sunlight dancing on water
A summer day you once knew
Tasting it as clearly as looking through glass
Sweet as sugar
Yet a glimmer, a faint breath
A gasp in the dark
There and back again
Tangible and real and clasped tightly
Then gone…

Memory is but a slow, sticky conglomeration
A lose vapor, clinging cloud
It refuses to ever fall solidly enough to remain
To be found forever
But will not leave you entirely
Lost in its own web
Like a spider spinning its own shroud
Destined for its own demise
Embracing its ill-fated destiny

Patchwork Woman

Faded patches Tattered stitches Dust in her hair As the dust of memories past Her life in rewind Yellowed parchments, faded lettering Leading from empty childhood To this empty street Cold, impersonal stone High towers of imposing wealth Mockery and indifference Even disgust For such the likes of her Eyes are dulled Of that vibrant spark That had once marked her of this life Now she is the dregs of life Cast off and tossed into the gutter What she had once been What she has become Everything she once knew Swallowed up by life Life of a cruel and harsh nature Left her behind Alone Cold Empty Invisible yet reviled Unnoticed yet kicked aside Was she once you? Is she what I may be? Gloves as dirty as the city garbage bin She rifles through To her our garbage is a treasure Reduced to pursuing the most basic necessities of life A simplicity in her pursuits, her motives Yet the simple pursuits more complicated Than my spoiled mind will ever know Does she have a story? Did her book have a beginning and an end? If asked, she would simply stare Whatever it was then However it began It has led here And here, she believes, it will end. Dried up as a carrion carcass The refuge of life And our darkest, most depressing moments For her there is no hope Hope there was once an illusion That has slowly faded As she has slowly faded Into the dust of the street...