Fulcrum of a Rose?
To be fair, Shakespeare
got the jump on roses,
used up all the best descriptions.
It's bad enough we're out here
pretending to be Ada Limón and Billy Collins,
only to wax about the break
of a clichéd organ
in relation to a common flower.
A flower I can't keep alive
in the backyard
but that somehow persists
in the collective consciousness—
hardy in symbol, finicky in soil—
for more than a millennia.
My first husband used to say
I had a parts-per-million nose,
could sniff out a broccoli lunch
from two weeks ago,
if I kissed him.
I rarely did,
which is how I met my second one—
the one who said I smelled like garlic
before a storm, and meant it
as a compliment.
I used to believe there was something
to be learned from that.
But the point is, the guts of a thing—
what makes it beat, or bloom,
or cling to a wooden stick—
is as a god,
or how corndogs are made:
it is ineffable.
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