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Posts Tagged ‘rose’

Learning to Treasure What’s Here

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 23, 2025| 6 Comments »


 
 
I believed I had lost it,
the rose bush I planted last year,
what, with the way it died back
after that hard spring frost.
Died all the way to the ground.
Every stem turned brown.
Was it for hope or laziness
I didn’t dig out the roots?
This year, the rose stayed dead
until one day, green. More green.
Then burgeoning, vibrant green.
And now flowers, so many flowers,
flowers of palest pink. The scent
greets me at the garden gate
every time I enter. How precious
it has become to me, this treasure.
Not because I thought it had died,
but because now I remember
it will.

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Making the Gingerbread House

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on January 3, 2022| 4 Comments »



Your sister and I finished
this year’s gingerbread house—
not a duplex this time,
nor two condos connected
by a gingerbread bridge.
It’s a single house with angled walls
like in the Jan Brett illustrations.
How can I be so happy and so sad
at the same time?
It’s like being a rose
that has lost all its petals and yet
is in full petalled bloom.

There is, in every moment,
an opening that appears—
and I find I often stand
in the threshold, one foot
in now and the other
with you in eternity.
Then the kitchen
is not only a kitchen.
but a garden.
And every gardener knows
she must grow first herself.
And the baker knows
everything she makes
is made to disappear
in its prime.

And so it is on this night
of decorating gingerbread,
your sister and I use bright candies
and thin pretzel sticks to make
a one-room house
unlike any we’ve made before.
And we laugh. And I miss you.
My petals drift across the floor.
My petals open into wider bloom.

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In the Last Flush of Summer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 1, 2015| 1 Comment »

oh but I swear

it smelled so sweet today,

that rose bush

we didn’t plant together

all those years ago

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Because I Thought I Knew What It Should Look Like

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 25, 2013| 1 Comment »

I grieved
that the rose had stopped blooming
when in fact
it was opening
only very, very, very slowly

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