November’s Rose Garden

By Internet Archive Book Images [No restrictions], via Wikimedia Commons

November’s Rose Garden

You’re like any flower bed
laid open to fall’s lullaby,
stuttering with blown-in red and yellow stars,
a cedar mattress of mulch.

When my hand came,
you sighed yes to the tucking in
to dream through winter
aware and not aware of ice,

to hold secret your May promise.
I snipped your crooked, crossed
and withered canes and one tight white bud
left beyond reason. I raked up black-spot leaves.

How much alike
we are, pulling in
for coming winter,
needing more seasons

as we fade in ache
at dimming down.

Photo by Darrell Salk.

Tricia Knoll is a Portland, Oregon poet who has maintained gardens all her life, sowing the seeds of sanity. She grew up admiring her mother’s roses and vegetable garden. She is an Oregon State University Master Gardener and volunteers at Portland’s Washington Park Rose Test Garden. Her chapbook Urban Wild is available from Amazon and focuses on interactions between humans and wildlife in urban habitat.