Children flit about the yard,
Passing and flashing through the day.
Glittering lady slipper smiles
Parted as always, with something to say.
Until the silent rose seduced them,
Quieted their restless tongues,
With a world of glamor, wonder,
And a ladder of creaky rungs.

Taught the ways of beauty and of forgetting who you are,
The children leave the roses' den and start to drift apart.

These fresh tender blossoms, shrouded by thorny prose
Peeking at the weedy world to seek the problem
That they will water 'til it grows.
Then whines and whimpers fill the garden
When each reaps what they had sown.

So on goes the mask,
The beauty, and the thorns.
Never to look back or remember
The place that they were born.
So valiantly do these puppets pretend,
That they do not remember if
The means are really worth the end.
So forward, forward, they do begin.
Smile big and smile bright,
But just enough to win.
Oh, what a beautiful day for living,
In the garden of lovely sin.