Friday, June 06, 2008

June

No one remembers the little old lady
Who planted the rose bush by the door

It blooms every June now
Blasting garish pink blossoms
Like sky rockets against a dark sky

Not even the neighbors remember
The woman when she dug the hole
And smoothed earth over
The young barbed roots

Her gnarled hands bled
In the last year of her life
Dripping red into the black
Soil

She never saw it bloom
She never caught a whiff
Of sweet tea through the open
Window while she crocheted
Scarves for soldiers
Who would never receive
Who would never return

But that was sixty years ago
And no one remembers her
Even in her own kitchen.

Only the rose remembers
It feels her in its roots
It feels her light touch in its
Leaves

It remembers her
In the explosion of
Color and waft of
Tea sweetness
Each and every
June.

2 comments:

  1. Reminds me of the gorgeous roses my grandmother had at her house.

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  2. Well this just all came about because I wandered by a house in a neighborhood where all the old folks had died and it was full of youngish people. They didn't plant the glorious roses that were blooming by the door.

    It is also a half-assed reference to Whitman and Robert Burns, of all people.

    (How does that work for a poetry reading introduction? I really dislike it when poets give introductions to their work.)

    Either it stands for what it is or it falls. No explanation is going to save it.

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