Peace

Day 27: 'begin by reading Bernadette Mayer’s poem “The Lobelias of Fear.” Now write your own poem titled “The ________ of ________,” where the first blank is a very particular kind of plant or animal, and the second blank is an abstract noun.'

The Rose of Peace

My father made a pergola

Across the back of the house

Around the concrete patch

We called a patio;

My mother made it into a rose bower.

Each time she went out

Into the summer garden

Hanging washing, picking apples, 

Calling over the fence to Aunty Joan,

She passed between, under, through

The sickly sweet scent of roses -

Pink, orange, cream - amongst the green.

One sticky afternoon, set to the task

Of sweeping up fallen petals, leaves, 

I asked her favourite: Peace. 

To me it was just the name of a rose

That bound all the colours

In a fragrant embrace,

To her, a brief twenty years

After the war, a symbol of hope 

Rising calmly beyond the thorns,

Which she could visit every day.  

This year, long years since her passing, 

I planted Peace by my back door

In hopeful, fond remembrance.  

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