I gazed into its mournful eye,
Its eye gazed back at me;
I could not bear to cut a rose
That looked so mournfully.
"You, too, have suffered," I remarked,
And sighed with sympathy.
I am a staid, reflective one,
Of the Sierra Club;
The bartend tells me all his grief
When I go in the pub---
I wondered what this rose's life
Had been when it a bud.
Sometimes a very little thing
Will make my tears to flow---
"What was your life," I asked the rose,
"When you begun to grow?"
She did not answer me; words were
Too weak to bear her woe.
"If you could only speak, perhaps
The words might ease your pain!"
The faded rose appeared as dull
as compost after rain
When viewed at breakfast morning hour
Oe'r a bowl of unbleached grain.
Not one sign did she give to me
That showed she might have heard;
She only held me with her gaze,
She did not speak a word---
Did she withhold her confidence,
Or was it but deferred?
In either case, it made me mourn---
Though I am used to it;
Too often people stand aloof
From my more melting fit,
Too oft they fling and pierce me with
Their darts of cruel wit!
I do recall I sprayed my blooms
Once in a fitful dream
And when I woke at dawn I found
The foliage was all clean---
The words from my organic friends
Were nothing short of mean!
I am so seldom understood!
Once, as the teardrops flow,
Upon a bloomhead severed
And floating in the bowl
Exhibitors then came then out in force
And tossed me from the show.
I've never seen a beetle crawl
Along a rose's bloom
But that I've thought, "Poor helpless thing!
"You have so little room!"
Thinking that you must have a bite---
Before you meet your doom.
O little faded rose, I find
This grief where'er I go!
And you have suffered likewise, for
Your manner tells me so---
O little faded rose, I fear
Our world is full of woe!
(With acknowledgement to Don Marquis - writer of Reverie - a work about a sad sardine)
By Robert B. Martin, Jr.
Fall, 2002
"October's Bright Blue Weather" by Helen Hunt Jackson
Spring and Summer, 2002
"A Passing Glimpse" by Robert Frost
Winter, 2001
"Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost
Summer, 2001
"Memory" by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Winter, 2000
"The Heart of the Tree" by Henry Cuyler Bunner
Summer, 2000
"Red Geraniums" by Martha Haskell Clark
Spring, 2000
"Immortality" by Joseph Jefferson
Winter, 1999
"Everest" by Eunice Tietjens
Fall, 1999
"Tree at my Window" by Robert Frost
Summer, 1999
"Climb The Mountains" by John Muir
Spring, 1999
"The Rose Still Grows Beyond the Wall" by A.L. Frink
Winter, 1998
"The Runaway" by Robert Frost
Fall, 1998
"Hope" by Emily Dickinson
Summer, 1998
"A Patch of Roses" by Gail Lemnah Barnett
Spring, 1998
"Song of the River" by William Randolph Hearst
January, 1998
"Birches" by Robert Frost
November and December, 1997
"One Last Rose" by Gail Lemnah Barnett
October, 1997
"Far From the Madding Crowd" by Nixon Waterman
September, 1997
"Kiss From a Rose" by Seal, from the Album: "Seal"
August, 1997
"Summer Rose Saga" by Gail Lemnah Barnett
July, 1997
"A Bird Came Down the Walk" by Emily Dickinson
June, 1997
"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost
May, 1997
"The Path That Leads to Nowhere" by Corinne Roosevelt Robinson
April, 1997
"The Firefly" by Jane Stuart
March, 1997
"Plant a Tree" by Lucy Larcom
February, 1997
"The Daffodils" by William Wordsworth
January, 1997
"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost
December, 1996
"Wintering Rosarians" by Gail Lemnah Barnett
November, 1996
"'Tis the Last Rose of Summer" by Thomas Moore
October, 1996
"Autumn Chant" by Edna St. Vincent Millay
September, 1996
"The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop
August, 1996
"Departmental" by Robert Frost
July, 1996
"City Flies" by Alan Van Dine
June, 1996
"My Neighbor's Roses" by A.L. Gruber