Rose Garden

I went to the nursery to buy some roses,

checking the varieties and colors,

even asking for help, for I don’t really know roses,

not like my father did, roses planted for my mother.

You asked if they were for you, the red ones

I picked out, two bushes wrapped in burlap,

bound with twine, shiny leaves and pointed thorns

poking through, a couple of buds visible in their fullness;

so I lied, told you, yes, they were for you,

for the garden, that little patch of

earth behind the house, a patch we set off

with scalloped bricks, a weed infested patch

I cleared just for these roses, digging up the ground,

churning it, turning it, mixing it

with peat, a must for healthy plants, I was told,

and spray with pesticides, to keep the bugs away, aphids, too,

watering periodically, lovingly, but not too much,

advise I expect I needed, heeded as best I could,

though, perhaps not as well nor with as much care,

leaving them instead to bloom on their own.

And they grew, in time, soft petals pushing the buds open,

spreading and bursting outward, their red stark against

the dark green leaves and thorns and the brick of our house,

those roses a gift of love I bought

for myself, for my garden needing love,

that patch of weeds untended behind the house, a patch

set off with scalloped bricks, churned and turned,

the one spot of beauty otherwise missing

in that tangle we called a home,

the place where we lived, you and I,

but by summer’s end they were dead, flowers

and leaves fallen from black and brittle stems,

the thorns bared, barbs to catch the wind and windblown,

all that remained, their beauty long since faded,

long since gone, in the waning days of summer;

and there they stand still, a constant reminder,

lifeless stalks in a patch set off by scalloped bricks,

reminding me what I’d always known,

I really don’t know roses.