Just
above flaked paint and crusted brick
outside
the kitchen door, a trio of roses
depends
on nothing so much as a string
round which
their tendrils twist and grip.
An
inclement early summer has turned
our
garden feral bucolic – its lack
of
austerity’s fecund with motley,
aerial
mating damson flies, excitable
finches
squabbling. Dripping ferns
splay upwards
like invitations.
A
helicopter saws the breeze.
From
the sun glints on its skis,
it’s
apparently protecting us,
sending
wildness off to scamper,
and for
a moment at least
I can’t
remember anything like this
assertion
of some right to interference.
My
father grew roses, their pink shades
used to
hang in our living room.
All he
was ever concerned with
was their
smell and preventing the blight
which he
knew might destroy them.
I can’t
speak for him, but I suspect
he
would have delighted in seeing
roses
painted one day in Bulgaria.
