Last Rose Musings

 On January 30^th of this year, I wrote a poem about a rose. I called it the last rose and, in the end, said I would throw it out.

“… an everlasting rose

so beautiful in its essentiality  

that I hesitate to throw it out,

despite the fact

that it is no longer in its prime.

I can perhaps wait

and let my children

throw it out – 

one of these days.

On second thought

“one of these days”

might mean

“who knows when.”

Procrastination is not called for.

So, ruthlessly,

out it goes.”

---

Ensuing comments on the poem

disagreed

and made me decide to keep the rose.

I carefully laid it, no longer standing upright,

 in its green glass vase,

on a glossy round black bowl,

of Chinese or Japanese make,

that sat on a shelf in front of my mother’s portrait.

---

Now, nine months later, the time has come.  

It can no longer be thought of as a rose,

scarse petals scattered,

a few brown leaves barely clinging to a naked stem

Analogies are perhaps inevitable.

 I too am no longer what I was.

 Sometimes when asked how old I am,

and I answer 95,

I wonder if my memory is playing tricks.

I cannot possibly have lived that long.

Almost a century.

Yet, a glance at my ID

and a bit of math involving the current year

(at least the one I find on my iPhone’s computerized calendar)

convince me to accept the fact.

Around ten every morning

as I walk slowly down the street,

using my cane, 

no longer the second, let alone the fourth,

but that third leg of the sphinx,

 that is just as valid in the morning 

as in the evening of my life,

I cannot help but think

of those with whom I have crossed paths,

both now and then. 

Where the street curves into a piazza

I still half expect my lawyer friend in his greatcoat and fedora

to corner me as he quotes from whatever Greek or Roman author

he is reading.

And further on there will be the bleached blonde lady

who rarely smiles.

 After laying out the red-checked tablecloths

of her son’s restaurant,

she sits there smoking the first,

or perhaps the tenth, cigarette of the day

as she waits for me to say buon giorno first.

---

And then I wonder what my sons will do

when I join those who are now only memories.

Does the brusqueness of their answers

depend on the fact that my hearing is now impaired?

Is it a sublimated response

reminding them to be patient?

---

The petals now lie scattered, randomly dispersed,

waiting to be swept away.

But the rose,

that last rose,

still lives on in my memory

and perhaps in theirs.

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