By Robert Rothman
You won’t perish, any more than the rose
bush will, though when the looper shears off
a cane, ringing out like a shot, it is
a bullet to the chest. Why does beauty
require such carnage, this pile of limbs
bush will, though when the looper shears off
a cane, ringing out like a shot, it is
a bullet to the chest. Why does beauty
require such carnage, this pile of limbs
and stillborn buds, the smallest leaves
now all in a heap like some offering, or a
funeral pyre? Why so transient this perfection
of fragrance and form, since beauty is truth
is the good is love? Nothing holds here: all
subject to the chop, the cut, the paring down
and thinning out. A bloody business, this annual
pruning; the thorns still razor sharp; fingers and
forearms scored scarlet; an errant cane a blow
to the neck: no one escapes the blade. You too
each year on the block: the excess, the over-
blown, the exaggerations, the mendacities of
self-deceit, the fables and foibles, the whole
mess that needs cutting, cropping, lopping
off, bringing the self to a single stock where
new can begin and beauty might bloom. You
can’t burn the limbs and canes: too much
moisture. So you cut and cut into smaller pieces
to fit into the green can for organic waste. And
in the cutting, the rose, the bush, the crisscrossing
limbs: the joy at its sight, disappears. Leaden sky
and the sun barely seen. Yet, on this day of utter
destruction, surrounded by cut-off limbs like the
end of a day on a grisly battlefield, something
within feels hope. New year: come, I am ready.
Robert Rothman lives in Northern California, near extensive trails and open space, with the Pacific Ocean over the hill. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Tampa Review, Willow Review, and over ninety-five other literary journals in the United States, England, Canada, Ireland, Wales and Australia. Please see his website (www.robertrothmanpoet.com) for more information about him and his work.