Two Passions
Our father had two passions.
Not his two children.
They, merely barriers to be reached past
on the way to his wife.
She, his first passion.
His second, roses.
Hybrid tea,
floribunda,
polyantha,
pioneer.
Shrub rose,
rambler
china,
noisette.
Bourbon,
damask,
grandiflora,
ragosa.
Over one-hundred bushes,
pruned,
sprayed,
watered,
tipped and covered each fall.
By midsummer their sturdy canes reached so high
a grown man walking among them
disappeared.
My father,
walking among them,
disappeared.
After work at the dusty mill,
he went every day,
spring through fall,
to his roses,
emerging at dinnertime, beaming,
a single perfect rose cupped
in his hands.
“Here,” he would say to our mother.
“This is for you.”
Our father’s gift to us, as well,
his hands offering
that single
perfect
rose
to her.
How is a man’s life to be measured?
By the damage the world has done?
By the thorns he grows to keep safe?
By a single perfect rose
offered
in the purest
dependence,
the purest love?
When my father died,
no one knew what to do
with over one-hundred rose bushes
reaching for the sky.
When my father died,
I discovered
I didn’t know
how to cry.
Photo by Mihir Waykole on Unsplash
