Dry Roses

By Roy Dean Doughty
Written 5/8/08

Like stiff hoses, which hold and transport
Water for a long time, even in drought,
The leggy stems of the roses, stressed,
Squeeze out multitudes of blossoms
As big as human heads and as frilly-full as peonies.
Add their pinks to the soft blue mists
Of morning and we experience that lesion
Which Xes out the rules governing
Latin nomenclature and brings about
The autistic’s exquisite dream music
Pulsed from a total wakefulness. Thus,
The universal language of dialectic
Plunges into a howling gulf noosed
To a thunderbolt. The baby we, up there,
Experiences this, while our many replicated
Castings crack to bits under beauteous hammers.
We take note now of the moral and mental chasm
Separating insentient from sentient surfaces,
Sight as bludgeon or sight as sweet caress.
Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit. “Tooral,
Looral, kick the Pope, hang him with a tarry rope.”
A child will sing as a child skips,
Touching the rose on its hose with praises due.

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