Out of the old green Rand McNally,
pressed between North Dakota and Ohio,
fell a handful of faded rose petals,
once yellow, now brown.
Brittle and strangely flat,
they hardly resemble the flowers
they were when they came to me
in an exuberant bouquet.
The petals are dried past pretty,
pale and dead, and still
there is something lovely about them,
the symmetry of the darkened veins,
how smooth they are, like skin.
I, too, am more fragile,
twenty winters older since
I slipped these petals into
the weight of the atlas,
and part of me shakes my head
at that naïve girl who so wanted
to try to save something beautiful.
And part of me thanks her.
She could not then have known
how on an late summer night
I would discover them again,
and, surprised, take a sniff and find,
could it be? a faint sweet scent.
Some nights, even the tiniest bit of beauty
is enough to shake us wildly awake,
reminding us there is so much
yet to bloom, so much we still long
to give to the world.