Native Daughter of the Golden West

In the Morcom Rose Garden

they call it something else now

It is 1937 again

It is 1937 always

Lines are sleek and features grand, dramatic.

Everything in its right place.

***

“Thought upon the living tree”

It says so on that plaque.

I memorized it once.

It’s gone from me like so much else.

***

The living tree so secret in winter,

A stubborn machine working under leafless cover of gray skin.

The living tree so alive in spring,

So alive with fragrance and colors obscene

So alive to draw a heart from inside a chest

Send it soaring

Send it up

Send it back and forth in time or understanding.

***

These fucking roses. All these fucking roses.

From one to almost eight thousand.

The own-root, the bud union, the ramblers.

The sweet rotting mulch of protective decay.

The spray I want pinned in my hair.

The sucker to be ripped away.

The sucker to be ripped away.

***

When the benches are cold, like

Cliché tombstones

When the sky is coated

In the dense gray flannel of fog

And the roses

The roses

Run riot underneath,

Electric eddied current in acres of cupped earth all its own.

When this happens

Almost every day

When this happens

I’ll put your hand in mine

Wait patient

For electric current to show itself

Go leafless to plush jagged green

Wait patient for our basal break

Our growth determined.

I’ll wait.