October Day Among the Roses
The trees keep tearing themselves apart,
leaf by golden leaf, each one more fluent
than the next, in a language of the sun
while the lukewarm breeze languishes
in the late shade, and the perfumed gardens
behind the painted gates, shine redolent with light
and auras of roses and pungent pine.
There, the finches still gather—their sharp
cheeps indistinguishable from human laughter.
What is the memory of memory?
Here, on this rosebush, I’m surprised to see
three blooms on a single stem, and in different
phases now: this one in its budding infancy,
sepals curled, the other flowering, its chalice
half full, tipped with dew, and the last one
slumped further down, petals scorched brown
and beginning to crumble—its secret center
wormed-in, and buried in ash.
JUDITH HARRIS’ books include The Bad Secret and Atonement (LSU Press) Night Garden (Tiger Bark), a critical book Signifying Pain: Constructing and Healing the Self (SUNY Press) and The Poetry of Loss: Romantic and Contemporary Elegies (Routledge). Read more.