Roses

Standing in her garden as a boy
collecting blackberries in plastic
pots from overgrown and
interwoven thorns I turned and
saw a small pink rose, its petals
tightly wound yet breaking open
slightly to reveal a secret held
within. She turned and said that's
almost worth getting married for,
that flower, and I remember thinking
then that perhaps she wasn't happy,
in her garden there, married and old
with permed white hair and perhaps
she had wanted more, to be given
roses and to wear them in her hair,
to keep canaries and go out dancing
and not to bruise quite so easily. But
together we turned and went back to
the berries and the brambles and left
the rose and its secret silently sitting there.