Afoul

We often see beauty, but miss what lies beneath...

Thinking I'd found beauty,
I called the neighbors to this rare find--
no rain for weeks, no grain, corn a forgotten dream:
and now this one wild rose.

"A sign of hope and good times to come,"
we reassured each other,

never seeing the twisted stem burned and black,
thorns already dripping
with the blood of tomorrows'
sacrifice, sons lost, daughters sold;
one wizened bud refusing to open ,
crushing deep in crimson thrall
all we could have been.

We saw the bloom,
looked no farther,
and made of it a shrine:
for it never withered in the heat,
the petals soft as sin, red as lust.

Sometimes I dream I hear its silence;
I think it speaks to me.
          And when I look at it the next day
          it nods at me in the windless sun:

                   and I know it knows that I will never be its undoing.
                             and I know it knows it was never really wild.
                                       and I know it knows it was me who planted it here so long ago.

         And still no rain.


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