The Rose Is

 

This is not about a woman

in a Pre-Raphaelite painting

or the lesbian poet

who sang  a rose is a rose is a rose --

 

it is about a standard

of being, bearing grace.

 

Skin whorled soft

in coral,

 

Stem a long

and straight spine,

 

and leaves flared

like shoulders wrapped

in the wind's shawl.

Its fabric of  holy things:

 

feather wisps

of hawk or raven,

dust and grass

from a burial ground,

 

seeds and needles

from an ancient tree

 

and  whispers of old ones

we don't understand.

 Their voices cindered

 in the early and evening light.

 

And here, the flower lives

in the shadow of the mesa,

a stranger to this terrain

 

yet, her breath is solvent

in the breath of the desert --

absorbing what is there

and what came before.