Rose petals thick and heavy
Just ready to wrinkle
Strong, firm, delicate
Simple
Feigning delicacy.
Tighter and tighter to their middle
Lips curling back
Pouting open
All eventually revealing the
Veins!
Veins
Veins
Veins on the roses
From the underside spread upward,
Uncurled,
Veins.
Some so proud and broad
Some coy and curtseying
Some wide open, greeting you.
——
Some angling to the light
——
Some fading their color at the tip
——
Some!
Some doubling inward. Two twists inside!
Why? Overcrowding.
Petals wide,
petals too ready, petals broad
And she made herself a lover
——
Some older, wiser
By quicker death wisdom grows
The peaked face within
Afraid
Afraid of what is coming faster for her.
Something her beauty could not slow
An aging ballerina, refusing to retire her slippers
——
Some wider
More careless
Hippies
——
Some like a dance
Such a vulnerable entrance  
Opening up her lips, her arms, her legs,
Spouting out her tiny tongue
Aroused
——
Some so full
Hiding herself in her layers
More of her.

Ancient.
Just a blip.

Trimmed from their bush. Here to die in a vase by my bed.

By eaves, burdened by the weight of pendulous leaves
Dropped by spent trees
The pulse of sap
Stilled within them.

By branches curtseying and bending tunefully
In anticipation of the dance they are called to
By gossiping winds
unable to hold their chatter.

By sleeping dog, untroubled by arthritic knees
As she chases industrious squirrels
Whispering death to them in stifled barks
Pleasure outpouring the soft container of her dreams.

Autumn, her breath tinged with the gold of promised darkness,
Exhales gently across the waiting land
And dusk seeps
Through closed lids
To meet her lover
As night descends.



Copyright/All Rights Reserved Audrey Howitt 2011

Death dances round me,
A specter, a shadow,
Always just past the corner of my eye.

She weaves a tapestry thread through my life,
Taunting me meanly,
As all I know and love dies.

She arrives unexpected.
She arrives unannounced,
But sometimes her calling card comes in advance.
Surprise or no,
She still sparks a shock,
Whenever she enters the room.

Death dances round me and round me...
And round me still again,
Til the band strikes up my song,
And curtseying politely,
She insists I join her in a waltz.