Coincidence

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rose climbing my garden wall is held
tall in its reach by wires faking a notion
of security when fierce winds blow along
the canal’s length, bowing reeds to drown
in the waves’ slap at the fast crumble of path,
its edge toothed, shuffling gravel in a slide

down mud to heaving water. I’m on a slide,
as well. There’re no poetic visions that’re held
in my mind’s eye, none but the slog of a path
I’m loath to take: the sestina’s a pitiful notion
in my unskilful hands. No doubt it’ll drown
by the reeds, rotting away at the bottom along- 

side beer cans and bottles as I sulkily trundle along
with this dire write. I watch the roses slide
from wires and flop; their morning petals drown
in a whipping rain and drop, no longer held
to a might’ve-been hip no fuller than my notion
of what this poem’s about. Such is my path:

not the aim of ruined roses and death, but a path,
fragile, enduring – just. I’ll stutter along
its length till what runs out? I’m up for the notion
that walkways deceive, windings hiding the slide
to a stop, then decay, while greener reeds are held
by taut-wrung roots as brown flowerings drown,

fluttering seeds on the water’s wake; they’ll drown
or float, but tell me that fate has set their path
and I’ll spit bricks at piffle that may’ve been held
in medieval frightners-by-night along
with demons, dogmas and autos-da-fé. Best slide
by all that murk and return to roses, or a notion 

of roses, stripped as these ones are, a notion
the wind has pared to the real as petals drown
once more in churning water and more still slide
beneath my feet on this unsteadying path,
crushed and defaced, ended. Life trudges along
to defeat whatever belief beholders have held.

I’d never a notion of what would befall on a path
so inconstant that flowers drown as wind along
water leads to its slide. By that, I’m held.