Friday 5 June 2015

Рози/Roses



Just above flaked paint and crusted brick
outside the kitchen door, a trio of roses
depends on nothing so much as a string
round which their tendrils twist and grip.

An inclement early summer has turned
our garden feral bucolic – its lack
of austerity’s fecund with motley,
aerial mating damson flies, excitable
finches squabbling. Dripping ferns
splay upwards like invitations.
A helicopter saws the breeze.

From the sun glints on its skis,
it’s apparently protecting us,
sending wildness off to scamper,
and for a moment at least
I can’t remember anything like this
assertion of some right to interference.

My father grew roses, their pink shades
used to hang in our living room.
All he was ever concerned with
was their smell and preventing the blight
which he knew might destroy them.

I can’t speak for him, but I suspect
he would have delighted in seeing
roses painted one day in Bulgaria.