The Gardeners Rose

I walked among my garden in the hush before the dawn,
Where every leaf held celestial light the fading stars had sewn.
Each bloom I’d placed with careful hands, each root and winding vine;
All growing toward a pattern in my subtle grand design.

And there, among the others, stood a rose both bright and rare,
With petals full of tenderness that cast a fragrance in the air.
She bent beneath a hidden weight no eye on earth could see,
Yet still she gave her beauty with a steadfast dignity.

I felt the tremor in her stem, the illness at her core,
An illness that dictated she could linger there no more.
Not plucked with wrath nor taken by some careless passing breath;
But called, as all things someday are, beyond the veil of death.

“Not yet,” the garden murmured, “let her stay, she gives us light.”
But I had seen the greater field that waited just from sight.
For in my halls were corners where the dawn had not yet grown,
And I needed this great beauty that the earth had rarely known.

So gently did I lift her, though the soil clung in plea,
Each rootlet bound by love and time and fond, shared memory.
“I do not take,” I whispered, “what shall simply fade away;
and I'll bring her where her blooming will not dim from day to day.”

Within my house, I placed her where the light is always new,
Where every petal opens fresh, forever kissed with dew.
No hidden thorn can trouble her, nor shadow dull her flame;
She lives in fuller color, though on earth, she seemed the same.

And still I tend the garden where her absence now is known,
Where her buds stretch toward the sky with the strength they once were shown.
For nothing that was given is ever truly lost;
Enduring love becomes a seed, no matter what the cost.

So when you feel the void of where that radiant rose once grew,
Know she has not been taken without purpose, nor stolen away from you.
She blooms where I have called her, in a place both wide and bright;
Still part of my great garden, just beyond your mortal sight.