A poem …

October Rose

By John Timpane

Eyelid-pink survivor of summer, 

October rose, with what? to teach,

Thrives in a backyard blond with winter

Higher than ladderless arms can reach

Though ladders lean in the darkened shed

With all the other roses gone.

Something dusk in the gardener’s head

Forestalls the cut, and leaves just one:

How do we garden best the years?

Sit at the window and watch worlds spin,

Or, with decisive close of shears,

Go to the outside and bring it in?

To us, who know the numbers lie,

Which way is better? Who can tell?

Let the rose grow where it can die

Petal by petal, just as well,

Or bring it indoors, let it say

What we can’t be but wish we were:

Bare to the light of every day

Instead of this glazed investiture?

As we puzzle, autumns pass;

A late rose opens undisguised;

While we stay here behind the glass,

Transparent, thorned, and paralyzed.

A simple choice becomes hard, hard.

The drift of decision leaves us dumb:

Gladden the room? Bereave the yard?
Run to winter? Or let it come?

Revealers unsure of what’s revealed,    

What will we cut off? What regrows?

Can what is broken ever be healed?

October Rose     October Rose