POETRY

Yellow Rose

The quiet torment of public disregard dampens my spirit

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

Trapped
by South Louisiana’s
still heat,
sweat sobbed down the cheeks of water glasses

wetting flesh of the living, seeped into
fresh knitted cotton
in solemn discretion beneath
dark all-season wool.

We placed
the garden’s full balance
of fragrant yellow roses,
bound with raw hemp ligament,

upon the polished lid of her pine box,
yellow roses she so cherished,
our Mary,
more fertile than the first

of her name,
yet in death —
for she had faded beneath malignant clouds
even before yellow dusk demanded —

once lowered below the surface,
fistfuls of arid soil drizzled
like jazz-brush bristles
upon cymbals,

spirit commended,
that odor became for me
the fetid scent
of Greenlawn’s morning breath.