'Only a rose'

Only a rose

Only a rose in an area window
telling the tale of a sportive yesterday

or pressed in haste on someone by somebody else
who’d been stood up but still wished love to dance 

across the evening.  The rose knows nothing
of what it was meant to say, how it was dressed to say it.  All it wants 

is to sing back the glow of the moon, which never says
what they say it says either but happily listens while nosing apart

the dark of the rose’s room—fixing the way an old-gold blouse
pours down the back of a chair, how a clock tickles the low hours. 

 

Only a rose and only a moon doing what nobody sees
free from all the mortal chat of need or contrition.

If the rose dreams, it’s of rain’s delirium.  If the moon dreams
it’s of birthing its own light, quitting as gofer to the sun.