May 2016
Dorianne Laux
dlaux1@gmail.com
It's always so sad to see my roses destroyed in a summer storm.  When I run out and save them, leaving those that are too young or too old behind, it seems so inhumane, so antithetical to the ethic of "women and children first".  
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I go out to cut the roses
 

before the summer storm rolls in
on its crest of abandon. I'm stumbling
down the row with a scissors, fat drops
already fretting the petals, a fraught silence
descending, a gray uncalm forming
below the clouds. 

And the roses wait for me in blowzy
disarray, heads bowed, leaves palm up,
stems crisp and alive between the blades,
thorns dazzled yellow, dipped
in glossy black, stripped away with hard snips,
the sharp tips useless, harmless
in the pocked dirt.  I pass by 
the half-open, tongue-tip buds. 

Lower leaves, in threes, snapped, fall
lazily into my hands, light as hurt birds.
I abandon the big ones, holding on to their petals,
locked loosely to each stained hinge,
fringed, layered, lovely
as the dew-soaked pages of an old book,
fragrant as the ages, heavy-scented, shadowed
in rooms of perfume.
 
I take the others in, angle each stem
into its glass throat, lucid
with clear water, the hard rain
thrashing the windows now,
the ones left behind letting go, 
undressed by the wind, cupping 
the rain in their wounded skin.​
2016 Dorianne Laux