Poetry Friday: When The Roses Speak
When The Roses Speak (flowers on my desk)
As long as we are able to be extravagant,
we will be hugely and damply extravagant.
Then we will drop foil by foil to the ground.
This is our unalterable task, and we do it joyfully.
And they went on. “Listen, the heart-shackles
are not, as you think,
death, illness, pain, unrequited hope,
not loneliness,
but lassitude, rue, vainglory,
fear,
anxiety,
selfishness.
Their fragrance all the while rising
from their blind bodies, making me
spin with joy.
Mary Oliver, Devotions