There is so much to field these days. A poem might assuage the soul ….
Transcendent Rose
A single rose is blooming
in my hillside garden
It opens to the sky
as if it’s early May
instead of late September
The rose, lavender, and sparkling
is like a palimpsest of all flowers
It’s like a vestige of an English garden
A remnant of the countryside
where John Keats might have wandered
A purple rose also bloomed late
in that little fenced-in field
It shone in the angled sun
near the shade of the plum tree that sheltered him
as he conjured “Ode to a Nightingale”
That rose was an efflorescent companion
to Fanny Brawne
Early in the morning
she relished its rich intoxicating fragrance
kissed by cool pearly dew
John made only brief and desultory visits
to the garden
He hardly noticed the haze of purple
or the atomized liqueur
pouring forth from the single rose
Still, it connected John to Fanny
and as she inhaled its aroma
it consoled her
while he was preoccupied
with the persistent verse of the bird
The nightingale had put him under a spell
But despite its melodious call for a mate
neither Fanny’s fresh smile
nor the balm of the quintessential bloom
could retrieve him
He could not stop listening to the winged creature
belting its song
The nondescript bird
fanned a different kind of fever in John
As he sat underneath the branches of its tree
he desperately fought to sing
his own song
a song that would accompany him
through fleeting
blue-black
tender and solitary
nights
Visit on Instagram