Inexorable Rose

(Against the interrogations of the wounded:  to my mother, in memorium -  1927-1993)

“…the last rose of Summer.”

T. Moore
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Inexorable rose

blocked from the site

where you bloomed only

yesterday

in soft delight-

I think it may not matter yet

that I’m too clumsy, frightened,

locked out of the fete

and anguished beyond  anguish

when I hear:

familiar cartoon music

starting up again

at whose expense

are the backstage cackles

managed best behind the scenes?

let’s all be clear, out in the open:

that the finite poison arrows

missed  their mark;

and Your  sweet colors live sheer  loveliness beyond

the singeing, simpering order of their day

and The café, corner-market  heat

of all the self-lit suns

not that inevitable…

it’s you with your one thorn left

till the jeering race is won

bloom out in the Watch of God – bloom on-

through this chill summer

linger, still

though petals curve to raindrops
In the end or to

remorseless  winds  that almost shatter you

yet they will not.

Oh rose fallen out of your legend

unexpectedly

or pushed from behind on a playground slide
unmonitored

never  knowing when it will happen next

that petal’s torn from petal while you wait

For whose turn now

It is to speak

In the sold-out, sell-out play

and  spurious miscasting

dripping with monstrous rhinestones-

Diamond paste this on the wind, then:

and paper-crown it

That I’m  in the song I made for her repose

and myriad lovely others

In their fallen sparrow exits

dazzling into God:

bloom on in Heaven free from care

and in the poems I leave you here-

mary angela douglas 25 october 2011/21 august 2011