Still Life with Rose by Richard Scott

Still Life with Rose

 

Like a foreskin being pulled back, the damask 

reveals – pelvic bowl of pink-fringed shadow, 

dense sweet-meat bloom, coral’d cave, puce 

empyrean with no vanishing point, planetary blush! 

So let me in – where everything is new-born 

and crystalline, paused and protected – into that other 

world, that high-shine place of safety, arranged 

and sparking up like a bower. Almost every day, 

for some moments, I think about him – the black 

stems, thorns that can prick so deeply, whorl 

of serrated leaves, all just beneath, around – still 

gorgeousness – your petal’d cumulus, your constancy – 

helps me live. O rose keep on stunning for me – 

for all us boys who have been ruined by men.