Reflections of an unabashed political and social progressive, Gen-X poet, and Episcopal Religious…

(dedicated to my mother)
September 12, 2003

I never saw a rose before the age
Of twelve in spite of all the rolling hills,
The hopeless green of Pennsylvania farms.
We left an emptiness behind to seek
An antidote, safe haven from her pain;
A marriage dead, the rattle dying still
In silent scorn, betrayal, loneliness.
Who knew what matriarchal strength endured
To build a life from ruin or from fear
Of retribution from a father’s ghost.
Such envy of her fortitude I still,
Like marrow, carry deeply in my bones.

A rose a day her lover brought her. From
His mother’s gardens he had gathered each,
And somehow in his tender moments showed
In every season how love toiled, bound
And twined one generation to another,
Passed a woman’s longing to her children.
What (jealous?) nature of this mother’s son,
I never cared much for his clumsiness,
His brutish contradiction to the rose.
Each blossom seemed some strange apology,
His awkward lack of reference oddly framed
– By beauty’s tender continuity –
The possibility of loveliness.

Collecting them like ornamental bits
Of crumpled, colored paper, (gingerly,
In baskets first and then in plastic bags)
She spent her years surrounded by the dust
Created by the gathering weight of them
Hanged in bundles on the wall, on tables,
Captured love in jars – its present form,
Its ever-changing color, and its death.
Yet each so gathered, daily laid to rest
In wicker vessels, brought by aging hands
Through years of love, of struggle, then of pain,
Disclosed a secret that I carry still;
The story of dried roses and their power,
Their suppleness, and their intransigence.

Fast forward, I am nearing forty years
Of age and I am captivated, still
Reminded by the aged and crumbled leaves
And petals plucked by my own lover’s hand;
While our inconsequential lives unfold
Surrounded by a thousand tiny deaths
In baskets, under bell jars, lain in state,
Those roses, yet intransigent, refuse
To yield their beauty even while they fade.
Transforming into memories – even dust –
Apologies, our maladroit attempts
At tenderness, each bloom a sacrifice
Receives its mortal wound and offers up
Its pliant, yielding frame to history,
That we may long remember unto death
The passing of our youth, our love, our breath.