Rosa Espinosa

[to the Spanish language]

rosa espinosa extravagant words
most emblematic of the rose is your music, undeterred
by the spiny creatures flung on land

by the petulant tides of any other language
how I love your red blossoms rosa espinosa
how I loved your song

blooming over the walls of my dolls' English
ladies land and some of their organza stitched by hand
or cross stitched I see you pictured on the flash cards

beautiful as a foreign land

bought for us by my Grandmother one summer
when I learned Serenata on the piano
by Enrique Granados and spelled you

gleaming through los jardines
I heard your

string sprung primavera, primavera
rosa espinosa I said when a child

I will sing you forever
and the roses say as they said then:
she isn't wrong

to say so, sing so think this way through
flame on flame as petal to petal
finding the names in the fairy flowerbeds

or like Easter eggs at Easter dyed lilac, turquoise

opal and red and golden golden rosy it rolls away into
the side yards 

rosy rung rung the school bell delighting, lighting the way
poinsettia stars came out
and reigned over us anytime

and not only at Christmas.

mary angela douglas 12 april 2015