Roses & Seasons.

I wrote these two pieces in 2008, so you may have already read them. If not... "they're new to you!"

There's something about this poem that I like, though I'm not exactly sure what it is. In an odd way, it's about an identity struggle. Other than that, I'll let it speak for itself, because every time I read it I get a different feeling from it.

China Roses.

All you can ask for is time.
All you can have,
A cellar full of your mystery,
Or a candle,
To light for your romance.
Fear what you must,
Embrace what you will,
A broken mirror,
Or petals of scarlet & crimson,
Dried with time.
The numbers pile up & overflow,
The experiences repeat,
Grasping at your chance,
Feeling out possibilities.
Your weathered wooden table,
An empty porcelain cup,
A bowl of fruit,
Pears, apples, peaches, and oranges.
Forced into a corner,
Still you dream
Diamond dreams,
But a tin reality.
Shine on what you can,
Hold your roses through your days,
Present them to your nights.

_

This next thing is about the fall giving way to winter. Just like the first piece, when I read it again yesterday, I got a very different feel from it. Now that we're going from winter to spring, it's like the battle is over (for now, at least).

Recede & Advance

Crystal shavings, gleaming white and shining blue, flock through a colander of leaves, speaking brown but glowing green. Dark hidden corners surrender to a room awash in colour, succumbing to the light. Revealed is the space where there once crept a shadowy crouching devil.

Outside the tall standers and low sitters dot the ground, spreading gold and orange into the sky and letting it drift down to earth. These messengers find their resting place among the green-clad soldiers of the ground, delivering their freezing cold letters. Wisps of whistling chills curl through the trees and the rocks, moving the golden messengers from their rightful home to their new one upon the earth’s floor.

Shambling sidewalk movers bound in furs and cottons turn from the whispering spirits of the oncoming cold. Faces covered by scarves and shawls close their eyes to Winter. Their thoughts speak of frigid bitterness equal to that of the nearing frost.

“Keep your tyrannical treacherous torturous tendrils from tearing at me! My limbs need not feel your grasp, my mind need not feel your chill, and my whimsy certainly needs no dampening from you!”

The looming season will not respond.