Roses

 

The living roses are now gone
both of them.
The world sings a more sad song
without them.
No more blossoms come
to cheer and light the day.
No sweet scent to guide the way
at night.
In their place two angels sing
Peace to those who loved them bring.
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He sat in the garden where, so long ago, she brought him to tell of how she and her mother had tended this place and how beautiful it had been. There were tears of remembrance as she recounted how they had, each springtime, cleared, planted and nurtured the flowers…, and the love they shared for each other…, and how much she missed the warmth of her mother’s tender and sheltering care.  He looked around him at the weeds and overgrowth, and after hearing her, he began to understand how much love had been alive in this place, resolved that it would once again be a tribute to the two women who had shared so much here.

She would be away for a couple of days now, plenty of time for all to be accomplished. He brought out the tools and implements he needed from the shed and began by cutting everything to the ground. All would need to be replaced, even the roses whose canes had died. He had finished by noon and had gone to the nursery to look for flowers. He selected everblooming roses, red ones with large, full blossoms, then a collage of annual and perennial color to complete the vision she had described. By early afternoon the next day it was finished and he was satisfied. He scrubbed and polished the marble bench that was at the end of the walkway in the middle of the plantings, turned and walked back to the house to wait for her return.

Around five o’clock he heard her car in the driveway but was puzzled when she didn’t come into the house. Looking out the front window, he saw her sitting on the bench among the flowers. After a while she came into the house and took him by the hand and led him back out to the garden. She looked up into his eyes and said, “Love is growing here once again…”

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The garden, the roses, both of them, the marble bench are all gone now, but not the love that lived there. That is forever.