My blossomed summer approaches in June.
My
giantess hands hold the wild rose bush,
as
it plumbs the live earth with its tap root,
what
I have planted no swine will uproot.
Here
velvet petals fall about, supine,
as
I collect them in my silken bowl,
my
face, shadowed, by navy linen cowl,
the
word-sketched lace of lost Europe sublime.
The
potpourri of nations gathered here
beneath
my careful hands—seeds, wrinkled, dry,
petals
on the day will, vacuous, shrink,
the
audience obliged, their heads raise near,
to
taste a smell so sweet, their heads bowed, cry:
at
perfume on the brink, in rosa-pink.
Who
is Rhonda? the populace might ask,
as
my rose bushes divide the white sun,
as
my broad shoulders held trowels like guns,
and
garden muscle rippled at the task.
I
had dark coarse hair like a horse’s mane,
and
hands like a man’s, that dug in the earth:
this
is my haven, lest you swallow first
the
fruit of rose hips without noticing
who
grew them there for your china teacup,
who
first held the seedlings, and trimmed to thorn,
who
in all right gathered the burr rose buds
in
all their burgundy glory, starlets—
kicked
at my resigned brow like newly born—
and diva-wide leaves curtseyed to no one.
It
was no easy task not to be feared,
so
I kept to myself in the garden
of
wild roses, the play-land of pardon
where
the pine tree’s imagined guilt is cleared.
Every
plant has a purpose to the mind,
and
kept in bowls, they resonate on dew,
they
reverberate to heal and be new
bandages
to the poor, renewal-kind.
These
remedies, gentle, innocuous,
have
glass droppers in apothecary,
with
labels in brown, line the referenced shelves.
I
am well equipped, for the sensitive:
bottle
by bottle, steeped in dark brandy,
every
book about these valued plants sells.
To
write each word in scrawl, I am resigned;
I
bow my head in sacred solitude.
Hands
reach out as if blind, similitude
to
those in the dark and shackled, confined.
I
shall be their pale hands and fruitless feet:
medicine,
Socrates in a black slug
re-creates
their hard skulls from languid mud,
ravishing
the frozen heart’s rhythmic beat.
Here
in this dirt, I am forever plant
of
greenest, verdant, rain-soaked, flow’ring park:
there
is a branch reaching out, magenta
on
drying spruce where now I languish, rant,
wailing
as wild rose, petals fall to bark
in
falling dark, covering stigmata.
Rising harmonic line ascends as shrill
as
woodwinds can raise the dead from their graves,
as
heavenward the dusty lift their face,
their
lost, wayward fuchsia mouths have their fill.
For
every born child—fair with marked face—
at
this burden, has hung their heads in shame,
resigned
to what they carry as their fame,
and
cowered before others in disgrace.
As
adults, they go on, and did forget
the
notions they, as children, entertained
in
innocence at some brown misplaced mole.
Where
hunch-backed crows cawed out at their regret;
beneath
the witch-like trees, inside the rain,
honey-haired
lads went on without a chore.
But
I, Rhonda, lifted the rock water
to
the pink rose tree on the scull-wood knoll,
poured
from my Ethiopian-black bowl,
temple
of apothecary fathers.
Here
there is only a taste of rose milk,
what
is pressed and left from the dead teacher
who
made the path through this tangled ether
modernity,
shoes the doctor would fill.
Bach
is veritable god, the creatures
cried
in unison, no leaf, nor flower
unnoticed.
All nature, his remedy,
and
his clean, clinical, boyish features
crafted,
yielding of his one shy power
to
graft the wild-blown branch—calamity.
I, Rhonda, stand tall in last eve’s twilight.
I
am genuinely liked by no one,
I
am incongruous; the last bold thorn
of
the wild rose, in early summer, fights
as
a flock of geese adapts to the winds.
I
remind my patrons with solemn truce
of
calloused hand’s shaping nature’s rose-puce,
of
how a strong woman never rescinds,
of
an old lament—song from long ago:
not
to be afraid of your own thorns, sharp
where
they grow. Croon the antiquated runes,
for
this is how the wild rose rampant sows,
this
is her dedicated music, harp
that
sings aloud; with her digits, she prunes.
Emily
Isaacson
