french pink

There are two climbing roses by her gate,
one to each side, with velvet blooms, small,
but heavily scented, suitable for soaps, salves



and potpourri. They blossom out together,

several hundred, perhaps a thousand whorls

French pink, shading to cream, the haunt



of matching shy arachnids. How tall they'd grow

she doesn't know, having twined an arch of willow

whips atop her gate, to bind them to.



In her middle years, her family took this place

and named it for the stony creek, dry

in summer, rolling through between house



and garden. A storm year came; that garden up

and vanished down a river to the sea,

leaving them three dead plum trees and a rose.



She started fresh, by the house. For the rose

she chose north, a shaded wall, and while the bush

liked a hidden spring there, for drinking,



it never cared for the paucity of light. It'd

stretch its greeny fingers roofward, up

and over; send roots drilling left and right;



make awkward shoots. Shift it one more time,

she thought. Maybe both sides of a sunny gate

she'd build, with an arch. The spot she had in view



she could muse on from her kitchen window.

Again two days of digging, and with her bow saw

made one rose two. Would they take another journey?



It seemed they would, though they'd always want water;

She'd have to remember to make the hoses reach.

She wouldn't mind if the roses wouldn't mind.