POEM
The Metal and the Flower
Intractable between them grows
a garden of barbed wire and roses.
Burning briars like flames devour
their too innocent attire.
Dare they meet, the blackened wire
tears the intervening air.
Trespassers have wandered through
texture of flesh and petals.
Dogs like arrows moved along
pathways that their noses knew.
While the two who laid it out
find the metal and the flower
fatal underfoot.
Black and white at midnight glows
this garden of barbed wire and roses.
Doused with darkness roses burn
coolly as a rainy moon:
beneath a rainy moon or none
silver the sheath on barb and thorn.
Change the garden, scale and plan;
wall it, make it annual.
There the briary flower grew.
There the brambled wire ran.
While they sleep the garden grows,
deepest wish annuls the will:
perfect still the wire and rose.
P. K. Page, "The Metal and the Flower" from The Hidden Room. Copyright © 1997 by P. K. Page. Reprinted by permission of The Porcupine’s Quill, Inc.
Source: The Hidden Room (The Porcupine's Quill, 1997)
Patricia Kathleen Page (1916—2010) was born in England, and moved to Alberta, Canada at the . . . MORE »
