Desire Rhose

Of all people on earth
I knew you the least.
How can I miss you
and feel this much grief?

A gift of blood,
a trial of communing,
a connection of souls
forged in pain and mourning.

But how could I know you?
You don't belong to my world.
Your place is in spiritual realms
in the presence of the Lord.

I strain to fathom
what your experience is like,
being merely a beginning
before you took flight.

A life wholly dependent,
in a strictly needy state,
a microcosm of hope
destined to a Holy Fate.

What you knew, I suppose,
was the purest humbling:
the brief embodiment of faith
in a Passion free of grumbling.

And so I find comfort
that one of my offspring
should draw so near to Jesus
in the fellowship of suffering.

I wish I'd gone before you,
so I could train you to be true.
But your teacher was the Master
and now I shall follow you.