I have entered the briar
Masses of thorns with hips
No longer blooming and
There was no path through
Behind me turned red
My wounds are flowers bled
Each rawness my own
A broken path I have shown
And though I grow faint
I cannot turn back and lose
Because I seek the lost
Entrapped within the briar
She hid here once upon
I remember it as long gone
Within she it so resigned
Overgrown brambles of time
Earth below recalling me
Each footstep a return home
Closer to my younger self
Caught within a maze of fear
Though thorns tear bodily
They can no longer wound me
Marking the path with life
I find her amid our life’s strifes
And I find her alive if afraid
Her fear holds her here within
And it tightens closer around
What sheltered once is stifling
She recognizes me though
Even though I have met she
But she had not yet met me
She follows the path I show
We leave the thornbush behind
Yet visit it still to tend and mend
If we ascend the steps to leave
We open the door to welcome in
In looking at it from the outside
We can see this Garden as Love
Dangerous and confining albeit
It helped us survive all up to now
Now it needs to heal much as we
Scars fade as fears wither away
A path I left behind is nourished
For green growth to begin anew
When the cycle returns to Spring
My rested heart will grow tender
And new branches will reach out
Budding into the light to bloom
