I don’t recall why,

but we tried everything

we could think of to kill that old rose bush.

It might have been fifty years old,

or a hundred, or ten

it really didn’t matter,

for some reason the roses had to go.

So it was hacked down to a blunt knot

barely an inch above ground.

Before summer could close its books

there were little green tits of rose springing

at every angle from the hackled stump.

So we chopped it again, below ground

this time, covered it and left no trace.

 

Spring thaw

…crocuses, tulips, buds on trees,

and little green tits of rose.

My father laughed and suggested

napalm, a very 70′s solution.

So we got lighter fluid, matches,

and created our own Apocalypse Now;

less than a stump, charred to a cinder,

splintered to ash and buried again.

 

Autumn rain

…leaves clogging gutters,

dormant grass going brown,

again little green tits of rose.

So we attacked its roots

with spades and flashing ax.

Digging deep and slashing at

the waxy tendrils that fed this beast.

And when a year had past without green tits

we marked the spot with sod.

 

We sold that house after our parents died.

Having scattered to lives of our own

none of us had the will to keep it in the family line.

Decades passed and returning home became

a funereal affair. The last was to bury one of

my own. Having buried parents, siblings and

friends from youth could not, did not prepare me

for the sight of my child’s casket lowered into

the grave, handfuls of dirt tossed in after.

I watch as roses are laid at the graveside

or dropped in that deep arid hole.

And looking at the rose in my hand

I understand fathomless remorse,

for my child buried,

and the beauty I have kept from this world.