In the graveyard at night, the woman collects fabric rose petals scattered in the snow, red ones, gold ones and black ones. They whisper across the dark drifts like the remains of autumn leaves. She chases them through ever-deepening snow, fills her pockets with them. She takes some of each, but since her pockets won't hold them all, she favors the red and gold ones over the black. She carries them in her pockets for years, taking them out only to launder the pockets. When she does, they escape, and roam around the house, multiplying. Her husband kidnaps them, trying to rid the marriage of the curse of the fabric rose petals. Only he notices that the gold petals are turning red, the red petals are turning black and the black ones are getting blacker and blacker. Velvety with soot. The woman rescues them. She now sees only gold petals, shining, delicate and light as a ray of sunshine. "Love me; love my rose petals," she intones to her insensitive husband. Since he despises the black rose petals, he immediately files for divorce. The woman fills her bed with translucent golden rose petals. They caress her skin. That night, while dreaming of a perfect love, she drowns in petals clinging to her face. When the man returns for his belongings, he finds her dead in drifts of black rose petals, a look of quiet satisfaction still lingering on her face.
Mary Stebbins Taitt
090224-1249-1d; 090224-1237-1st
This is a brand new poem I just wrote today and then I made the sketch as an illo for it, it's in Peggy F's sketchbook. I may, if I have time, make a "broadside" of the poem and a painting of it. This is a prose poem and does not have line-breaks.
5 comments:
wow. that is quite a poem. wonderful. why don't men get it?
Thanks so much O-frute! LOL!
Of course the poem arose from an incident where my husband was throwing away fabric rose petals I'd collected in the cemetery and had had in my pocket until I needed to launder my coat--he was throwing them out without asking me if I wanted. hello? I'd collected them because I WANTED THEM!
Men are rather dense sometimes.
But he's often sweet and loving, so I have to keep forgiving him for being a blockhead.
well,,I was so hoping you would not say this was based on personal experience...men can be blockheads!
absolutely stunning prose...
xo
OK... I will gingerly post here (a wee bit intimidating in this case, being a male...)
I loved the strong imagery in this. The petals heading more and more for black - the petals kidnapped moving to soot. And I can't help but get a little breathless at the thought of the "perfect love" (that detail provided only in the illustration, but it's a key in some ways to the poem, I think). That perfect love is beautiful and also the pursuit of it seems to have been fatal. A happy way to die, perhaps, but deadly all the same?
Blockheads are safer... (grin)
I am way behind on my email and blogging.
So sorry!
Thank you Linda and Steve for your comments. Steve, I do so appreciate your bravery AND your wonderful art--I wish I could have done a better illo for the poem. (Oh, and it IS a poem, a prose poem to be sure.)
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