Peter Cashorali
In the Rose
Even on a dark morning the color of the rose crosses the yard and escorts
you over.
You look into the rose and its tissue isn’t grass but flesh
Because flesh can be bright glowing orange, this color,
Can form a room as the rose does and the room opens into a landscape
Where everything is made of orange, which blushes and grows pale, grows
livid, takes umbrage,
Which is the color breathing because it’s alive,
And the ground underfoot, the hills in the distance, the sky with its sun are
formed of this live color,
As is this road and now this city, tall buildings, people and cars that stop
and go, all these lives the same life,
One life in everything, all middle and no ends,
Every receptor filled with tender beauty, synapses trading shades of beauty,
Endless and endless
Until you’ve had all you can and pull back
Out of the color and out of the rose,
Back into the morning which is, you can see it now, alive.