The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Donna Denizé

CARING FOR ROSES

            for baby Landon Travis Fulwider
            “Atoms vibrate in all the schools of the world…
            the pen cannot trace nor the tongue recount.”⎯Baha’u’llah

Every January, we order bulbs
from the nursery, anxiously open
the manual, searching (I don’t know why)
for something new; it never changes, though

all else does. Reading, each year, Caring for
roses: keep it safe, simple, we await
arrival: Begonias, Dahlias, Freesias,
Gladiolus, Lilies, and Roses too:

            To prevent rust, prune out inner branches;

we were watchers (in truth), secret watchers
of bloom and peerless unfolding petals,  
of mead’s florid splendor; majestic work
enamored, captured our gaze, boundlessly

swept us to luminous worlds, different
yet welded⎯mysteriously joined to ours.
And when from soil roses come into their glory,
I take a breath, gingerly

touch your hand, wonder full⎯Colors coming
with their simple shadowing bloom. From sun,
rain, earth, blossoms bid⎯exalt each flower

leaf, branch⎯everywhere flower⎯everywhere
colors: one country, colors⎯one nation,
colors⎯Begonias, Dahlias, Roses⎯
            And then, you arrive, eyes black as olives,

your hair of sable night, and I know
there is no manual for such blooming:
watering, feeding, pruning, and loving
with numberless days of light bring this birth,

fresh from heart-stir, as life-cord is cut, your
name, annunciated to waiting ears,
eyes, and we, speechless, searching no longer.
            (Caring for roses: keep it safe, simple).

As Mystic roses illumine the earth
to speak a common script, atoms vibrate
in all the schools of the world, move heaven

to disclose what had been wrapped, concealed, laid
up in bounty beyond our sight, bounty
every dawn tide, eventide. In each bloom,

the world of being and all therein
Thy heavenly place, river, banquet⎯grace
the pen cannot trace nor the tongue recount.