Perspectives on a Rose

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?