A Rose Poem Begun As Prose

Here's something. I had a white rose in a small brown vase on the kitchen windowsill, for months. It didn't stay white of course. It dried out and turned the colour of tearstained paper. The lavender flowers surrounding it were astonished, and refused to die. One day three rose petals dropped into the sink. I picked them up and placed them in my paper boats. They looked like little extra sails, optimistic, about to billow in the wind.

I was outside this morning looking at the roses. They were crisping up alarmingly in the heat. The red ones looked as though they had been subjected to an electric shock. The shock had curled the edges of their deep red petals, created creamy wedges in the frills, ripped holes in their underskirts,

and exposed their lurid yellow skin.
I had to bring them in.

And so the tearstained paper rose met its end.

It decomposed in a flutter of papery notes.
Five petals I put carefully into paper boats.

My rose, at rest, so fragile, in the sink.
The red electric fright roses replaced it.
Ah!

An earwig thrusts its tail at me from deep inside.