The Long Length of Hedging Roses is a together poem, a poem about gifting each other the time and space to be and grow without preconditions, without any rules.
The Long Length of Hedging Roses – Together Poem
In this episode, we gauge before
engaging in yet another bunch of
red velvet roses. You fertilize and I,
I clip and prune, we weigh up the volume,
we size the leaves and petals but not
the thorns. Clay pot, roots bunching,
our fingers have eyes and lips, our
tongues curl water and air, the salt
is the stars, buds foraged
in the mud. On the table,
staling bread and rhubarb jam
but you say melted cheese
stalls decay and capers break
the weight of the clay and I look
over your shoulder toward the
hedge roses, once potted, now
homing thousands of critters
like us. When resting on the lie-lows
beside them, the wind brushes its leaflets and stalks
against our skin, wafting rose oil is
humming an air
over the edge of the clay pot and the jam.
In this episode, the rays’ winning ways
melt our cheese, the freeze knelt
and bees nectar the long length
of the hedging roses. We caper
no longer taper the breadth
of our breath.
[…] in the salty air Now glimmering In the light of our eyes. We wore warm skin Filaments of a soft breeze And on us Passing clouds Casting shadow […]
[…] Nature requires no faceliftNor should you every sweepthe dusty road betweenyour house and the church or wipethe sweat from your temples.The wild, wild waves of the oceanmirror her hands as her children board the school bus.And the gagging, gagging gustis as perfect as the lump in my throatthe day she passed. I’m still at the gablehanging linen on the line on watch-out for thatone robin the next-door neighbour feedsdinner scraps. Her husband is wheelchair-bound,ornithology lifts,lifts his face toward the treetops.I hear her sing airs louder thanour quarrels, louder than gale-forcesqualls. Behind the garden back wall,a bunch of toddlers screech most daysand from the right, a waft of the old man’sVirginia tobacco. Mother and I are quietlike squirrels with a gob full of nuts. In our house,Father is the talker, his chatteringa dripping, dripping tap in the rain,the walls are leaf-thin,I heard Mrs Kavanagh from number threecall her husband an idiotthe same day they were making out outsidewhere the ivy travels across the window pane.And still, they mirror our songs and prongs,like rock faces throw, back what we’ve saidbetween the howls and the twittering,the humming and the hush of peoplebrushing inside, dewdrops mergingin the velvet folds of a rose. […]