I Get the Impression the World is Made of Roses

nothing but almost immediate decay-

sweet-smelling, soft on the fingers,

climbing the walls and falling

in long extravagant washes of rose-bloom

over fences, envining bare boards and settling,

peaceful, rampant, enlightening, compassionate,

careful, partially restless, more than a handful

over rusted nailheads, onto the locked gate.

Roses! Flowers and thorns! Broken stems!

A bustling rapture of dew-set buds!

Nodding in ecumenical frenzies!

Passions in loose exuberant landscapes!

Free as rain-you can wall them out

but you can't stop a single bloom, can't

even delay them: crushing bouquets,

the multiplication, the reproduction,

the endless repetitive sweep and sway!

Tie them down, they only strain through

the wires and unpin the stakes!

They liberate! They step out of line!

They grow in all directions, to the light,

unexpectedly verdant, unpredictably vain.

Joyous and splendidly narcissistic!

Disestablished, reaching out of the ground

with courage and beauty, seeking the sun,

a racket of color! Flowing, spilling, spreading

over manures and pathways-onto the

benign, hopeless, horizontal mesh of trails-

limp in cool mornings! Deeply circumstantial!

Decidedly loose! Prolific! Profligate! Righteous!

slatternly, sluttish, promiscuous! Living twice:

Once in the garden, once in the collection-

I get the impression the world is constructed

Entirely of roses!