Photograph by Susan P. Blevins

by Susan P. Blevins

There’s a sadness to your
fallen petals round my door
your color faded, from bright
red, to pink, to white, your
heady fragrance almost dissipated
in summer’s shimmering heat

Perhaps you appear sad
to my eyes because a
poignant reminder of
my own frail and
transitory beauty
the former radiance of
my vigorous youth so
quickly giving way to gentler
more muted tones of age
perhaps of weariness with life
and yes I know we all must
follow the same, inexorable

path from youthful beauty    
to fading grace, though the
knowing does not make it
easier to accept, when
autumn winds and winter
snows leave us dried and

withered, dusty remnants of summers
long gone, our past now just a hungry
memory, a blink in the eye of eternity
a breathless gasp from our                    
beginning to our end