Saturday, October 16, 2010

Roses


Thanksgiving Roses by Edith Dora Rey
doreyme.blogs.com
Rey-A-Day#287, Thanksgiving Roses, Aerial View, 7x10, ink +watercolour, Oct 16/10
Roses are on my mind, last night sleepless-I saw myself as a rose bush, giant, menacing and towering like a crooked mountain, surrounded by petals. A pool of petals, like red tears. As I ruminate about the image, I think perhaps I am a rose bush that forgot myself in the garden, I discounted my needs and desire to be tended and cared for as a rose bush, I grew up being tough and strong, powerful branches covered in thorns, lacking the tender soft perfumed petals and buds, ashamed of their beauty, their feminine quality-sultry-intoxicating-delicate-velvety- petals ...I think it has been many years of not recognizing or acknowledging I was what I am...now there is an innate stirring, a remembering and a desire to bloom into all the softness, reds, pinks, perfumes....but there is a need for cultivating care, specific to who I am.
And the courage to be what I am.
And maybe I'll discover that I'm not a rose bush after all, but the wind that moves the perfume through the air, or the soil that wants to be kissed by petals, or the bee that's hungry for the honey. Maybe all of these?
I wonder what form my art will take?

The Roses
All afternoon I have been walking over the dunes,

hurrying from one thick raft of the wrinkled, salt
roses to another, leaning down close to their dark
or pale petals, red as blood or white as snow. And
now I am beginning to breathe slowly and evenly-
the way a hunted animal breathes, finally when it
has galloped, and galloped--when it is wrung dry,
but, at last, is far away, so the panic begins to drain
from the chest, from the wonderful legs, and the
exhausted mind.

Oh sweetness pure and simple, may I join you?

I lie down next to them, on the sand. But to tell
about what happens next, truly I need help.

Will somebody or something please start to sing?

-Mary Oliver



1 comment:

edr said...

I always wanted an English country garden....roses, hollihocks, sweet peas, sweet williams, etc....but alas, there are too many huge trees (which I love) in neighbouring yards, crowding out the sun...but miraculously the roses thrive...the dogs + cat know to stay away from the thorns + the roses are the last flowers blooming in my autumn garden in Montreal...

Resilient, tough + beautiful, the roses...