~PETER SERCHUK~

NOT LIKE THIS ROSE

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Mine is a feeble way of being, 
lacking grandeur, not like this rose 
which insists on every possibility, 
which will not bend to any wind 
until someone's breath is lost to beauty. 
What form, plant or human, 
could feign to be its understudy? 
What cousin in this garden envies nothing, 
envies no one?  Oh rose, tell me please, 
just once, how you conjure such radiant light? 
Not what others see from across the road, 
not the public face you feed the air 
but what you glean fold on fold, 
that passion wine you breathe so freely, 
that scent you raise from unknown places 
invisible to every foreign sense. 
That's the one I'm after, the hunger in my lungs; 
cool mist shining on every thorn, 
oils steaming up from your darkest roots 
to intoxicate you with your own season.
 
 

© by Peter Serchuk