Living Tree Poetry

I never saw a rose I did not love.
No two alike
in colour, in shape,
in their ways of unfolding.

Some with petals curled in precision,
others flushed
and open,
as dancers alighting from a floor.

Some so translucent, delicate,
we refrain from the picking,
and watch the petals fan out,
fade and fall.

Always a sad,
sweet courting,
this processing of opening,
blooming, dying.

But on the branch
there buds another
promise, to replace
each one lost.

And the rose,
its almost as though it does not know
the short length of
its days.

Its thing is being here,
long or brief,
to open fragrant, full,
and even in the exit,

to fall or fade out
gracious as a swan,
swimming out from view,
at dusk upon a lake.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
November 2019

‘The design comes from within us.
It is internal’.
Anais Nin