Roses, Revisited, in a Paradoxical Autumn

Poets have been writing about the death of flowers

at least since Ausonius, but these November roses

defy all images of autumn gardens. The Michaelmas

daisies

left with the death of September, and the last late

sunflowers

drooped and went dark three weeks ago. These silly roses

bloom like a hysterical couplet out of Rilke,

and new buds still blush like conventional metaphors.

Undisciplined endings like this offend us. We want cold

in November,

petals dropping like autumn leaves, earth slipping into

seasonal sleep

decently and in order, as in a late Latin epic

or a universe ordained by Thomas Aquinas.

Flowers and the bright day fail. What's left, we embody

in elegies.

That's how we made sense of life, and the death of

women.

These roses and hot sunlight in early November

decline responsibility for their scheduled mortality,

leaving us with old sonnets and our own uncertain wrists.