An Elaboration of Roses

Since our writers' conference, I've been working on some experiments. One is finding ways to "make the familiar strange" by taking one idea and pushing it in various directions, like ripples expanding from a pebble dropped into a pond. This poem is one of the results.

A rose of beaten gold; a rose of brutal anthracite.
A rose in granite on the wall of a cathedral;
Another in stained glass, on the robe of the Virgin.

A rose traced in frost-feathers on my winter window:
A rose remembered from the memory of its scent.
A rose created from the memory of a rose.

A rose so tiny, ants carry it through tunnels;
Another so vast its petals blanket moutains.
An emphemeral rose appears and vanishes in a summer cloud;
Another grows in crystal beneath the earth. Each petal takes a millennium.
A rose is crushed by the foot of a mammoth.
The last rose blooms beneath a dying sun.

A blind beggar grasps a rose, scattering its petals.
A thief has hidden a ruby in the heart of another.
A rose droops forgotten by the bed of the princess with her lover;
Its stem bears the bite-marks of a slave-girl
Who danced beneath mosaic roses at sunset.

A rose in Java blooms in an old Dutch garden;
It blooms again in interstellar space, from data
Salvaged from the frozen planet of a long-dead star.
Heraldic copper roses whirl on the gears of a military airship.
The red silk rose on a Mayan blouse echoes the glory of the Blessed Virgin.

A rose is traced through star-points, to form a constellation.
A rose with teeth nips at the hand that plucks it.
Roses wither in a glass dome as the air is pumped away.
A rose tattooed on the breast of a murdered woman
Echoes the one left on the doorstep of the wrong house.
When it is not returned, there will be a drowning.

I remember a rose I once smelled in a garden.
The bushes sleep now. Snow is falling
Beyond the window, where the steam of rose-hip tea
Freezes on the glass, in feathered roses.