The Last Rose

Ichor running through her veins

All blood is pushed aside

Her eyelids shut, her heart on ice

My fate she would decide

Wilted romance, rotting vines

Garden left in thorns

A lonely rose from last years bloom

Bent over in her scorn

New seeds unplanted, sterile lay

Her cold impounds the soil

To blow within a fallow lust

Abandoned there to toil

With one more look, beyond all hope

My vision love impaired

Her verdict guilty, poison laid

—in blindness I despair

(Longwood Gardens: February, 2022)