I.
where light beams
through the attic,
a sunlit patchwork
doesn’t do justice to delicacy,
for the depths of redness;
of petals half-yawning.
as if from knowledge,
of last night’s nap,
of April winds and salt air—
II.
when I cut my rose, it was rooted
in the mansion garden of some wealthy
Arcadian financier. and I often wonder if it wouldn’t
have rather stayed in a labyrinth of vines, in the endless walls,
still set in the dirt among the cobbled planters—
I wonder but always forget about fate, about chance, and their interconnectivity…
…but can only recall the feeling of its first presence.
III.
there is the idea of the flower existing here and/or there
and then is the idea of it existing here
and there and within everything else, as a complement:
“the prettiest flower in the flower pot”
exhibits the flower as [tangibility]
the flower as [abstraction]
IV.
once we travel past this moment,
we will have left
a remnant of this: the memory.
as memories are intangible, we have tokens,
through which we dictate, in our mind, their placement
a Memento like that film, you know, in the part of the brain
that controls impulses like scrapbooking
these things become precious
as soon as you realize that they are
in this rose, there is the scent of this moment—
when you see it, think of this,
of us here:
how much better tasting is any memory,
when we’ve a way to remember it?
