Death of a Rose
Rose rambled in my wild garden free,
Crowning summer’s glory every year,
But voices of the tidy mind admonished me,
Cut it right back hard in spring I hear.
I could not cut it back, I let it grow,
And blooms that took the viewer’s breath away
Cascaded perfect pink, both high and low,
Celebrating beauty by each day.
Then I grew tired of all the leggy shoots,
And took the knife and cut it back so close,
And shocked the growing plant down to its roots.
I did not see that I had killed the rose.
And in my mind I shed a bitter tear.
The rose turned black and it would bloom no more.
The world turned round and passed another year.
Came empty space where roses grew before.
But now the rose’s hips that once had dropped,
Taking knowledge from the wilder eglantine,
Quite sudden came alive and grew unstopped,
As if to compensate us for what once had been.
And though the glory of the rambling rose is gone,
The fury of its children does survive,
Cascading pink amidst the spiky thorn,
Keeping distant memories alive.
© Alisha Sufit |
